Without Supervision, Everyone in the Mineral Chain Is Exposed

A missing cathode bundle is not discovered where it was taken. It is discovered at the destination weighbridge or the assay report, weeks later and thousands of kilometers away, and the loss lands on whoever cannot show sealed, counted custody across their own leg.

Traders & Exporters

You sold on a weight and a grade. When the destination figures come in short or off-spec, the price adjustment is automatic and the burden of proof is yours. Without transfer-by-transfer records, you cannot show where the tonnes went, so the deduction stands and the counterparty’s version becomes the contract history.

Mines & Producers

The corridor’s losses travel backward to your gate. Shortage found at the port is blamed on the mine’s dispatch figures, off-takers start discounting your declared weights, and your reputation pays for what happened on a rail siding you never saw.

Buyers, Smelters & Off-Takers

You paid a provisional price against documents. If the material that arrives is short, wet, or not the material sampled, your recovery depends entirely on evidence created before you ever saw the cargo. No supervision at origin means you inherit the chain’s losses at final settlement.

Cargo Insurers & Underwriters

Mysterious shortage on mineral cargo is close to undefendable without custody records: you cannot locate the loss on a leg, so you cannot decline, cannot subrogate, and cannot price the account. Every unsupervised corridor shipment is a claim waiting for a home, and your policy is the nearest roof.

Financing Banks

You financed cathodes in a warehouse and released against shipment. Between the warehouse door and the ship’s hold there are five transfers, and any of them can quietly convert your collateral into someone’s inventory. When the vessel’s outturn is short, the facility is already drawn.

Carriers, Rail & Road Transporters

Without seal records and tallies at handover, the whole corridor’s shortage can be pinned on your leg, because you are the easiest party to blame and the hardest to defend. A signed transfer record at each end of your custody is the only thing that keeps other people’s losses off your account.

Supervision costs a fraction of one lost bundle. The alternative is being the party in the chain who cannot prove what they handed over, or what they received. Whichever seat you sit in, appointing the supervisor puts the evidence on your side.

Mineral Cargo Services We Provide

Loading Supervision & Sealing

Supervision of truck, wagon, container, and vessel loading with seal control at every transfer, so the cargo that leaves the warehouse is the cargo that arrives in the hold.

Draft Surveys & Weight Determination

Independent weight by draft survey and weighbridge supervision, reconciling declared, loaded, and bill of lading quantities.

Sampling Supervision

Supervision of sampling and sample sealing to the agreed procedure, protecting the integrity of the material sent for assay and moisture analysis.

Container Stuffing for Cathodes & Concentrates

Stuffing supervision, tally by bundle and bag, photographs of every layer, and seal records for containerized copper, cobalt, and concentrate shipments.

Stock & Warehouse Reconciliation

Physical stock counts and reconciliation at port and inland warehouses, connecting to our stock monitoring service for financed cargo.

Corridor Transfer Checks

Attendance at rail and road transfer points on the corridors from the Copperbelt to the coast, so shortage is localized to a leg, not discovered at destination.

Can Tests & Liquefaction Risk Checks

Can tests on concentrates and fines during loading, flagging free moisture that may indicate liquefaction risk under the IMSBC Code, so loading can be paused and laboratory moisture and TML verification called for before the cargo endangers the ship.

Stockpile Audits & Volumetric Surveys

Independent stockpile audits at mines, rail sidings, and port yards: volumetric measurement, density-based tonnage estimates, and reconciliation against the books, before the stock is financed, sold, or shipped.

Commodities and Their Corridors

Copper cathodes and cobalt from the Zambian and DRC Copperbelt move by road and rail to Dar es Salaam on the TAZARA route, south to Durban, east to Beira in Mozambique, and west to Walvis Bay and the reopening Lobito route through Angola. Each route has its own transfer points, and each transfer point is where cathode bundles go missing or get substituted; our corridor checks exist because of that.

Coal and chrome move through Richards Bay, Maputo, and Beira; manganese through the South African and Namibian ports; and lithium spodumene from Zimbabwe and the region increasingly through Beira, Durban, and Walvis Bay. Bagged concentrates and bulk stockpiles carry moisture risk that a supervised sampling regime and honest tally keep visible before the laboratory and the buyer see the cargo.

In Tanzania, our mineral cargo team works the Dar es Salaam chain daily; weight determination runs through our draft survey team; and financed stock sits under our stock monitoring service, so the mine, the trader, and the financier can all read the same file.

Two moments in the chain decide almost everything, and both are cheap to control and impossible to reconstruct later. The first is loading. Once the hatch closes or the container is sealed, the story of the cargo is fixed: the weights, the seals, the moisture, the photographs taken in that window are the only version of events that will ever exist. A loading inspection is not a formality; it is the last opportunity anyone has to create evidence, and the parties who skip it argue from memory against parties who kept records.

The second is the stockpile audit. Stock sitting at a mine, a siding, or a port yard drifts: weathering, moisture change, mixing at the edges, and quiet removals that the books absorb one adjustment at a time. An independent volumetric audit, done before the stock is financed, sold, or nominated against a shipment, resets the position to physical reality. Every dispute we see at a destination weighbridge began months earlier at an unaudited stockpile; the audit is where those disputes go to not happen.

Mineral Export Gateways and Corridors We Supervise

Tap a marker to see the supervision point and the country team behind it. Blue pins are country anchor points; blue circles are further ports we attend; grey dots are on-request points. On mobile, use two fingers to move the map.

Every Port in Our Network

We provide mineral cargo supervision through our own offices and vetted surveyor networks at the following ports and inland points. If your port is not listed, ask; our network reaches further than any list.

North Africa & Mediterranean

Casablanca, Tangier Med, and Agadir in Morocco; Algiers; Tunis; and in Egypt: Alexandria, Damietta, Port Said, and Ain Sokhna on the Suez side.

Red Sea & Horn of Africa

Port Sudan; Massawa and Asseb in Eritrea; the Port of Djibouti and Tadjoura; and Berbera, Mogadishu, and Kismayo on the Somali coast.

East Africa & Indian Ocean

Lamu and Mombasa in Kenya; Tanga, Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, and Mtwara in Tanzania; Toamasina in Madagascar; and Port Louis, Mauritius.

Southern Africa

Pemba, Nacala, Beira, and Maputo in Mozambique; Richards Bay, Durban, Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), and Cape Town in South Africa; and Walvis Bay in Namibia.

West & Central Africa

Dakar, Conakry, Freetown, Monrovia, San Pedro, Abidjan, Takoradi, Tema, Lome, Cotonou, Lagos (Apapa and Tin Can), Onne, Warri, Douala, Kribi, Pointe-Noire, Matadi, Luanda, and Lobito.

Inland Corridor Points

Addis Ababa and Modjo Dry Port; Kampala; Kigali; Bujumbura; Lusaka and Ndola; Lubumbashi and Kolwezi; Kinshasa and Tshikapa; Goma; Harare; Blantyre and Lilongwe; with attendance toward Juba, Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey on request.

Connected Services

Weight matters run through our draft survey team, financed stock through our stock monitoring service, and inland attendance through our teams in Zambia and the DRC.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which minerals do you cover?

Copper cathodes and concentrates, cobalt hydroxide, coal, chrome and manganese ore, lithium spodumene, and other bulk and bagged minerals. Scope and procedure are agreed per commodity and contract.

Do you test the cargo yourselves?

We supervise sampling, sealing, and chain of custody; assay and moisture analysis are performed by the laboratory nominated in your contract. Our role is making sure the sample the laboratory receives genuinely represents the cargo.

Do can tests replace laboratory TML certification?

No. The can test is a recognized field check during loading: if free moisture appears on the sample surface, it is a warning that the cargo may be near or above its safe moisture limit. Certification of moisture content and transportable moisture limit remains laboratory work under the IMSBC Code. What the can test buys you is the pause: loading stops and the laboratory is called before an unsafe cargo is under the hatch, instead of after.

Can you cover the full corridor, not just the port?

Yes. That is the point of our network: the same instruction can cover warehouse dispatch, corridor transfer points, port receipt, and vessel loading, under one evidence chain.

Mineral Cargo Loading Inspections Across Africa

From Copperbelt to Ship’s Hold, Under Supervision