Gebrüder Weiss awarded for the project “Ships for the Desert”

The Austrian Foreign Trade Center Almaty (Kazakhstan) has awarded Gebrüder Weiss with the Silk Road Biz Award 2021. The award recognizes the successful completion of a major project in which Gebrüder Weiss transported 35 dredging ships from the Netherlands to the eastern Turkmen city of Kerki.

(Lauterach/Nur-Sultan) In the Turkmen city, the 90-ton dredging ships are used to keep rivers and canals free from sand and sediment deposits from the nearby Karakum Desert. The transport project, which spanned a period of one year, involved transporting the dredging ships in parts on heavy-duty trucks along the New Silk Road to Turkmenistan.

Thomas Moser, Director and Regional Manager Black Sea/CIS at Gebrüder Weiss: “The award shows that we are on the right track with our Central Asia strategy and that we have early on included truck and rail transports along the New Silk Road in our portfolio. For European exporters, the countries of Central Asia are becoming increasingly important. Shippers and investors looking to tap into new markets there can also rely on the country-specific expertise of our branches in Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and China.”

The jury’s statement read: “Gebrüder Weiss not only demonstrates its great expertise in transports along the Silk Road but also supports the sustainable development of water supply and agriculture in Turkmenistan. The Silk Road Biz Award 2021 is therefore a recognition of the handling of such a complex operation in a challenging environment awarded to Gebrüder Weiss. Congratulations!”

Timur Akhmetkaziyev, Country Manager Kazakhstan at Gebrüder Weiss presents the “Silk Road Biz Award 2021”

254 heavy transporters deployed

The transport series to Turkmenistan, completed in June of last year, is one of the largest projects by Gebrüder Weiss in the region to date. An average of eight and a total of 254 heavy and oversized transporters were used for each dredging ship along the 7,000-kilometer route. After disassembly, the components for each dredging ship had to be loaded in the exact order corresponding to the assembly of the components at the destination.

The dredging ships are of existential importance for the agriculture and population of the Central Asian state, as they ensure the vital water supply from the Amudarja River. To make this possible, the canal and river courses of the Amudarja must be kept free from sand deposits at all times.

Photos: © Gebrüder Weiss