The Ship Chandler

Ship chandler: A dealer in supplies for ships 

When a ship arrives at its destination, it would need to stock up supplies for its journey to the next port and this includes provisions, ship maintenance supplies, spare parts etc.

Ship chandlers are retail dealers in special supplies and equipment for ships and they usually also provide the liaison for the ships’ needs and demands in a foreign port. Commercial ships discharge and turn around very quickly in ports. Therefore, dependable ship chandlers are crucial to the shipping business; holding up a ship in port could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ship chandlers provide a high level of service and distinguish themselves through their ability to fulfil the ship’s needs within the short period of time that the ship is in port.

Effective delivery of the ship chandling service is even more vital in the Singapore port, where a ship arrives or departs every 2 to 3 minutes. Ship chandlers’ reliability and efficiency contributes greatly to Singapore’s success as a well-organised global hub port reputed for its full range of services.

Yumtrade is your online marine supplier in the sea ports of Singapore.

We offer you all kinds of provisions:

• Tinned products: local and imported
• Fresh dairy and long-life alternative products
• Canned meat, fish, fruit ,seafood and vegetables
• A wide variety of cereals
• Liquors: beer and wine
• Instant Foods: noodles and porridge

We recognize the importance of speed in the shipping world, our logistic and reliability in prompt delivery is your guarantee that the vessel can set sail as soon as possible.

It is strategically positioned near to our markets and customers, which include Wholesalers, Traders, Distributors, Ship Chandlers and other F&B players. With the latest software and a computerized set up, it is able to process orders online, in the shortest possible time. Automated Inventory system, a customized accounting program with CRM reports and wireless broadband internet are tools at its disposals. Offer One-Stop Marine Supplies, Ship Chandler Services. Call now!

Sea ports in Singapore:

New Penjuru Terminal at Jurong Port

The new terminal serves lighter and ship-chandling operators who deliver sea-stores and ship-spares to vessels moored in Singapore waters. By year-end, about 15,000 lighter calls handling over 365,000 tonnes are expected at the Penjuru Terminal.

New Jurong Port terminal a boost for lighter operators
Better facilities to provide essential service to ocean going vessels
Vincent Wee, Business Times 29 Oct 08;

SINGAPORE'S lighter and ship-chandling operators now have bigger and better facilities to work from with the opening of the new Penjuru Terminal at Jurong Port.

The opening of the new purpose-built terminal with 150 metres of berth space and 10,000 sq m of land area was a significant milestone for the operators.

Though not so well known, since the earliest days of Singapore's port operations, they have been providing a basic but essential service to ocean going vessels passing through Singapore by making timely deliveries of sea-stores and ship-spares to these vessels moored at the eastern and western anchorages.

'Lighter operations are an essential part of Singapore's maritime sector. As our port continues to grow, we can expect the scale of the lightering and ship supply operations to grow in tandem as well. The opening of Penjuru Terminal demonstrates our commitment to work in close collaboration with our key stakeholders to upgrade our lighter terminal infrastructure, to support the continued success of Singapore as a port,' said permanent secretary at the Ministry of Transport BG (NS) Choi Shing Kwok.

'The growth of Singapore as a maritime hub is intertwined with the dynamism of our lighterage and ship-chandling companies from the early days when their operations were concentrated in Telok Ayer basin. Their services form a crucial link for the operational efficiency of the Port of Singapore today,' said Jurong Port chairman Barry Desker.

The operators relocated from the over 20-year-old Pasir Panjang Lighter Wharves to Penjuru Terminal and have been operating from there since June. The relocation was necessitated by the need to provide higher standards of service and efficiency to keep pace with the growing expectations of the shipping industry.

Currently, 11 out of about 20 lighter operators in Singapore operate from Penjuru Terminal. The ship-chandling trade meanwhile has about 300 ship-chandlers of which about 225 operate from the new terminal. By year-end, about 15,000 lighter calls handling over 365,000 tonnes are expected at the Penjuru Terminal.

The collaboration among government agencies like the Maritime and Port Authority, JTC Corporation, Urban Redevelopment Authority, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority and Singapore Customs, the Singapore Ship-Chandlers Association, terminal users and Jurong Port enabled the smooth transition and functioning of the new facility.

Today's chandlers deal more in goods typical for fuel-powered commercial ships, such as oil tankers, container ships, bulk carriers. We supply the crew's food, ships maintenance supplies, cleaning compounds, paint, rope, et cetera.

Their specialty is the high level of service available and the short time required to fill and deliver their special orders. Because commercial ships discharge and turn around quickly today, delay is expensive and the services of a dependable ship chandler are urgent.

Our dedication to customers:
We are dedicated to serve and care for our customers and in doing so creating a delightful shopping experience for everyone. You can sit back and relax with a cuppa while shopping online, be it by yourself or with your love ones. Shopping for your household groceries will no longer be a chore and it can be fun.

Online grocery shopping is quick and easy.
In an ever fast moving world, people are getting busier and hope to spend more time with their family or on their leisure activities. In every household, we need groceries as part of our daily lives. Grocery shopping is a routine job for most families; we usually take 1-2 hours to shop, if you need to drive to the supermarket it may take 3-4 hours. So some even called it a chore!

Save money, save time with us.
At our website, we work towards money and time saving for you and your family. We retail online and our operation cost are much lower than physical supermarkets. So, we can offer customers more attractive prices when come to shopping with us. What’s more, you save on car park fees and save energy on carry heavy shopping bags. Online shopping also help you save time, so you can spend more quality time with your love ones.

Manage your shopping.
We invest in auto-mated system to help you budget and manage your shopping. There will be a trolley calculator so you can shop and view your total purchases instantly. In your account, you can retrieve past orders and buy the same items again, create a list in advance so you can remind yourself what to buy. This is especially helpful if you are planning for a party or event celebrations. You may retrieve this list at your next visit to complete your order anytime you like.

Online Grocery
Online grocers are sellers who deal with grocery products and may or may not have their personal shop front(s) for selling grocery. However, it is for certain that they are required to sell or promote the products pertaining to grocery on the Internet through any form of websites and be able to conduct online transactions of trade to be headlined under this term.
To be able to shop online, consumers must have access to any computer connected to the net and majority of them should have their own credit card or other forms of cash-less method to pay.  This will let consumers have more options of choosing the either the convenient way of obtaining their grocery or the hassle of spending time going down to the desired grocery store or supermarket and engaging in long queues just to achieve the same objective.

Online Grocery is a form of business-to-consumer (B2C) transaction.
Online Grocery shopping has yet to become popular but is fast becoming a rising trend and has the potential to extend its influence much faster than actual grocery shopping which has reached saturation point and is likely to be on the declining trend in the near future.

History of Online Grocery shopping
online grocery shopping came about in the US in the mid-1990s during the "dotcom" craze. However, it stagnated for quite some time as consumers weren't yet ready to trust the internet with something as important as their grocery lists. However, now that internet shopping is such an enormously gigantic business, it's no wonder that there is a new buzz around online grocery shopping. If you are going to give it a try, you should have a high-speed internet connection. Using a dial-up connection will be very slow and frustrating, and you'll end up having to spend more time buying groceries from your home computer than you would probably spend driving to the store as you normally do.

Trends in Online Grocery Shopping
When an online grocery shopper has a good first experience with a certain website sixty percent of the time they will return to that website to buy more.
According to research found in the Journal of Electronic Commerce, if we focus on the demographic characteristics of the in-home shopper, in general, the higher the level of education, income, and occupation of the head of the household, the more favourable the perception of non-store grocery shopping.
One knows exactly which website to enter, how much on the average the goods will cost, and the time taken for the goods to reach them. Online grocery shopping has become extremely routine and predictable, which is one of its greatest appeals to the consumer.
The moment a consumer selects a product or finishes his/her selection, most online grocery retailers will employ the shopping cart software which will tabulate the cost of items in the shopping cart with the option of allowing consumers to adjust the quantity of items in the shopping cart list, by analogy with filling a physical shopping cart or basket in a conventional store. One such shopping cart with user-friendly features can be found in Yumtrade. A "checkout" process follows (continuing the physical-store analogy) in which payment and delivery information is collected, if necessary. Some stores allow consumers to sign up for a permanent online account so that some or all of the user’s necessary information only needs to be entered once. The consumer often receives an e-mail confirmation once the transaction is complete. Less sophisticated stores may rely on consumers to phone or e-mail their orders (though credit card numbers are not accepted by e-mail, for security reasons).

Payment
Online grocery shoppers normally use credit card to make payments due to the fact they usually buy in bulk, however some systems enable customers to create personal accounts and pay by alternative means, such as:

• Debit card
• Various types of electronic money
• Cash on delivery (C.O.D., offered by very few online stores)
• Cheque
• PayPal
• Google Checkout

 Since majority of grocery shopping are usually done in bulk, the more convenient and cost-effective(time, physical effort) way of receiving your grocery is by delivery up to your doorstep like what one of the website known as Yumtrade has to offer.
Consumers’ demands and expectations
Satisfactory:

• Increased customization, e.g. "capability to treat customers as individuals".
• Able to do online grocery shopping 24/7.
• Discounts resulting in lower prices
• Able to fulfill most shoppers' needs. Comparison between several online stores at once.

Unsatisfactory (unsatisfactory experiences):

• Low security of online payments
• Not user-friendly
• Poor levels of services
• Varied prices
• Product delivered not in a good condition

Convenience
Online grocery stores allows consumers to make purchases at any time, 24 hours, 7 days a week, and many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home. A visit to a conventional retail store requires travel and must take place during business hours.
Searching or looking through an online catalog can be faster than browsing the aisles of a grocery store. Consumers with normal dial-up Internet connections rather than broadband have much longer loading time due to the appearance of pictures of products shown on these websites and have a considerably slower and more frustrating online shopping experience.

Some consumers prefer engaging with grocery store personnel instead of computers (and vice versa), sometimes due to the more complicated interfaces of the websites. Not all online-grocers have up-to-date and user-friendly sites.

For efficiency reasons, online grocery stores generally do not delivery goods immediately upon receiving an order. Orders are only filled during warehouse operating hours, and there may be a delay in the delivery depending on traffic and weather conditions but not to a large extent since such online grocers will restrict the area span from the warehouse where the goods are stored. Many retailers are likely to inform customers the time range at which they can expect their delivery to arrive, and whether or not they generally have a fulfillment backlog. A quick response time and efficient of its delivery service is sometimes an important factor in consumers’ confidence and trust in the grocery dealer. A disadvantage of online shopping is that, even if a purchase can be done anytime of the day, the customer must often be at home during normal business hours to accept the delivery. For many professionals this can be difficult as they have many time constraints, and absence at the time of delivery can result in delays, or in some cases, return of the grocery to the retailer. As far as grocery is concerned, it must be usually kept fresh or in a suitable condition and any of such delay may bring about a decline in the condition of the grocery in question.

In the event of a problem with the item - it is not what the consumer ordered, or it is not of the condition it is supposed to be in- consumers are concerned with the ease with which they can return an item for the correct one or for a refund. Consumers may need to contact the retailer, visit the post office and pay return shipping, and then wait for a replacement or refund. Some online grocery stores have more generous return policies to compensate for the traditional advantage of physical stores. For example, the online grocery store Yumtrade offers a thorough check of the condition of the items are all good and if the purchased item(s) are found damaged, they will either send a replacement free of charge or they will offer you a refund on the spot. Furthermore, customers are allowed to return the item that you do not desire within 1-3 business days by contacting them as long as the original packaging and receipt are kept intact.