And the winner is …..

….. the container from Costa Rica.

The first of our instrument sets has arrived back at the lab, and its the container from Costa Rica.

The first thing to arrive is the crane, bright and early at 08:00, and gets set-up and ready to go. We have two jobs for this one today, offload the inbound container from the lorry and, before that, shuffle the containers on the hardstanding so that we can make space to put the arrival in, but also access the sides of another.

As the crane is setting up, the reason we need to shuffle one for access becomes clear – its new and its missing its identification numbers and Facility logo. After a reasonable amount of scrubbing to clean the paint work, someone from the container supplier adds the numbers to the front door, and eventually to both sides. These numbers are unique to this container and are required to sea freight it anywhere.

Then it gets lifted up and repositioned so that numbers can be put on the sides – when they are new the underneaths are all clean and shiny – this one won’t be like this for long!

A space made – and our inbound arrives – on a double stacked 40′ lorry – the driver is taking an empty back to his HQ that was emptied at another site en route to us.

Ours being the heaviest, is on the front.

A quick attachment of the lifting chains and up it goes.

And down into its slot.

A quick shimmy to ensure the guiding rope can be removed once its on the ground. And its home.

We always check the customs seals on the container doors on arrival. The seal on this container does not match the one we put on it in Costas Rica – the reason – the UK Border Customs opened it on arrival in the port of London Gateway and inspected the contents. Once happy they matched the customs declaration, they resealed it and sent it on its way.

The question we always have on cutting the seal off and opening the door – how badly is this going to smell?

And surprisingly – it didn’t, nor was there water dripping from the roof as if often the case when a container is packed in a hot climate and returns to a cold one.

Back home safe and sound – another 100% deployment, recovery and data recording record – and a very challenging set of shipping and customs scenarios to overcome as well to make this one quite memorable.