Live Cargo Logistics – moving livestock by ocean

Preparing and Transporting Livestock

C. Gordon Thornhill Jr. has been exporting livestock for over 30-years as president of T.K. Exports, Inc. He started the company in 1982 after five years with the Virginia Department of Agriculture. His firm has expertise in not only sourcing and preparing cattle for shipment, but also in transporting them and arranging for their initial care and integration into their new herds.

“This business is a business that requires a specialty knowledge”, Gordon said, “Being a cattle breeder, being a cattle buyer or being a transportation specialist to me doesn’t cut it in this business; you’ve got to be a jack of many trades.” T.K. Exports has shipped everything from hogs to horses, but lately, the business has gravitated toward beef cattle. The firm has active markets in South America, Southeast Asia, Russia, and Eastern Europe.

“Over the years I’d say we have sent animals to around 50 countries. In some of these markets we’ve sent 50 to 100,000 breeding females to perpetuate herds.” When talking about target markets, Russia and Kazakhstan have large country-wide programs to increase their herds which have waned since the breakup of the Soviet Union. In Kazakhstan, for example, Gordon noted, “They went from something like 30 to 40 million populations of beef animals and dairy animals down to less than 10 million animals. They actually have World Bank loans and a huge undertaking in what they are trying to do. If you look at a map, they are right in between China and Russia, which they see as an end product for their meat. They are trying to produce their own meat as opposed to buying it from us or Canada or Europe.

Shipping to Kazakhstan has its own set of logistic challenges, Gordon noted. “The challenge here is how do we deliver directly to the farm? Again looking at the map, Kazakhstan has no seaport. What we’re doing is crossing over two countries, we’re going to Russia and then we’re trucking to Kazakhstan. The challenge for me is that I’m in charge of all of it. The shipments are based on D.A.P. Delivery at Point as opposed to CIF, which most people deal with. We deal with the challenges of transporting over another country which involves more bio-security because you have to meet the health requirements of that country and then you have to line up the truck transportation which in this case is something like 2,000 miles over Russia. You have to have various permits; you have to have CMRs, which is like an interstate permit here in the states. You have to have places cleared by the government so that you can offload the animals, let them drink, then reload them for transport.”

Within the Russian market, Gordon explained, “Russia probably has demand for 100 million head; they have less than 25 million. There is a demand there for the future to improve the diets in Russia.”

Specialized transportation is the name of the game for T.K. Exports, from the ports they choose to the specialty carriers like Livestock Express, which move their cattle. By the nature of this business T.K. Exports owns the animals they export from the time of purchase until delivery and integration into the import herd. “It’s not like delivering a container to some port. Years ago we delivered animals to some port and wiped our hands of it. Now we have advanced teams that go in and make sure they are ready to receive the animals and then after the animals arrive, we have another team that goes in to acclimate the animals to the situation.”