In the freight and haulage industry we all know how important it is to secure the goods we transport. Getting everything into the container in one piece and tying it down correctly is obviously something that will get done on every journey. The problem is that we don’t all take into account the effects that moisture damage can have on the goods or produce that we are transporting. This is a situation where desiccant to be useful.

Most of the time you will be able to pick up desiccant that take the form of silica gel packets and are package directly with products to remove any excess moisture within the packaging. This will obviously help but can do nothing about the moisture forming on the outside of the packaging. Humidity changes as well as the transportation of goods from a warm to cool climate can result in this condensation forming. Hot air has the ability to retain more moisture than cold air. Therefore if you need to travel overnight or for multiple days then you will find that the change in temperature causes the previously warm air to condense. Different packaging will not resolve this issue as this also traps air which then forms condensation even closer to the product itself.

For this reason it would make sense to make use of desiccants yourself. However the desiccant silica gel sachets that we spoke about before aren’t going to be the best solution for your cargo containers. You would need to get together a huge amount of silica gel packs to provide the absorption you will be looking for. That is why there are specialised shipping and container desiccants that provide the absorbent properties needed in these situations. The difference; Calcium chloride which delivers a much better ratio of weight to absorption. Calcium chloride is special because it can absorb 200% its own weight in moisture, far more than silica gel. In fact silica gel sachets can only absorb 30% of their own weight in water.