Opening
The Red Sea shipping crisis rerouted hundreds of vessels per month from the Suez Canal route to the Cape of Good Hope route. For Cape Town, this translated to a sustained increase in port call volume that began in late 2023 and, as of mid-2025, remained elevated, the majority of major carriers were still maintaining Cape routing despite intermittent ceasefire negotiations.
A Cape Town chandler with 25 years of operation had built their business around a consistent volume of 12-18 vessel calls per week. In Q1 2025, that figure rose to 19-29 calls per week, a 60% increase in peak volume. The increase brought both opportunity and operational pressure. More vessels meant more revenue available; it also meant more simultaneous RFQs arriving at a team that was sized for the pre-surge workflow.
The company faced a specific decision: hire aggressively to scale manually with the volume, or invest in automation that would allow the existing team to handle more volume per person. The Red Sea disruption was not expected to be permanent, a significant staffing scale-up for a volume surge that might partially reverse carried payroll risk. The automation path required less capital commitment and carried no equivalent reversal risk.
Why It Matters
The chandling market at Cape of Good Hope route ports was experiencing exactly the conditions that expose manual process limitations. Multiple chandlers were receiving more simultaneous RFQs than their teams could process concurrently. The result was predictable: slower response times, lower first-response rates, and fleet operators who had limited alternatives experimenting with new chandler relationships in the unfamiliar port.
Chandlers who maintained response quality under the volume surge retained and deepened fleet operator relationships. Chandlers whose service quality degraded under load lost business to competitors, and potentially lost it permanently, as fleet operators who found a reliable alternative in Cape Town during the surge had no particular reason to return to a previous supplier when volume eventually normalised.
The Challenge
At peak load (25+ concurrent vessel calls in a week), the chandler's quoting team of eight was processing an RFQ queue that extended 24-36 hours deep. Vessels whose RFQs arrived on Monday morning were receiving quotes on Tuesday afternoon, by which time many had confirmed with other chandlers who had capacity available.
The company attempted to address this with overtime and temporary staff. Overtime increased labour cost without proportional output improvement (fatigued staff made more errors requiring correction). Temporary staff lacked the product knowledge for accurate catalogue matching and required supervision that consumed senior staff time.
The root issue was throughput capacity under concurrent load, not individual staff capability. More people doing the same manual process increased capacity linearly. The demand was increasing faster than linear hiring could match.
The Solution
Tidal automated the high-volume, routine RFQ processing tasks, format parsing, IMPA code matching, stock checking, draft quote generation, that occupied the majority of quoting team time. Each quoter's throughput shifted from 2-4 completed quotes per day to 6-8 review-and-approve cycles per day. Total team throughput more than doubled without proportional headcount increase.
The company added 2 quoting staff (from 8 to 10, a 22% increase) to handle the expanded review and relationship management workload. They did not need the 4-5 additional staff that a fully manual throughput match to the 60% volume increase would have required.
Results
Results measured during the Q1-Q2 2025 peak surge period:
| Metric | Before Tidal (pre-surge baseline) | During Surge (with Tidal) | During Surge (competitor estimate) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly vessel calls handled | 12-18 | 19-29 | 19-29 |
| RFQ response time | 18-24 hours | 2.5-4 hours | 24-48 hours (reported) |
| First-response win rate | ~40% (baseline) | ~72% | Declining (reported by ops) |
| Quoting headcount | 8 | 10 (22% increase) | N/A |
| Quote accuracy rate | 89% | 94% | N/A |
The competitive differentiation during the surge period was significant. Competitors who maintained manual processing at the higher volume were experiencing 24-48 hour response queues. The Cape Town chandler with Tidal was responding in 2.5-4 hours, capturing a disproportionate share of business from vessels whose established chandlers in the port were backed up.
Several fleet operators who had never previously worked with this company confirmed orders during the surge period and have continued the relationship after the surge moderated.
Key Takeaways
- The Red Sea rerouting created a volume surge at Cape route ports that exposed the ceiling of manual processing capacity in chandling operations.
- Manual scaling (hiring) required proportional headcount growth for linear throughput increases, expensive and risky for a volume surge that may partially reverse.
- Tidal automation doubled per-staff throughput, enabling a 60% volume increase to be handled with 22% headcount growth.
- Maintaining service quality during the surge created new fleet operator relationships that extended beyond the peak period.
- The automation investment carries no reversal risk, if volume normalises, the capacity serves higher margin (less staff per order) rather than becoming idle payroll.
FAQ
Q1. Did fleet operators need to adapt to a new process during the surge?
No. Fleet operators continued to email RFQs as normal. Tidal processed incoming emails automatically and the chandler's quotes arrived in the same format as before, faster.
Q2. How did the company manage quality during the surge given the use of new temporary staff?
The temporary staff who were brought on were used for relationship management and exception handling, not for primary quote generation (which Tidal automated). This allowed the temporary staff to be productive without requiring deep catalogue knowledge.
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