A triple at Malpensa
Oversized transports urgently completed with the An-124-100. When a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia reported a technical failure the logistics specialist recruited to transport the spare parts had to arrange several flights very quickly. Three of the four flights operated via Milan airport in just a week.
13 factory parts with a total volume of approximately 811 m3 and weighing no less than 252 t were shipped from Europe to Saudi Arabia by Deugro recently. The overall transport task included two recirculation modules, each measuring 11 x 3.1 x 3.4 m and weighing approximately 54.5 t.
The Dutch subsidiary of the global project logistics enterprise Deugro was first contacted by the customer, and it then called in colleagues from Deugro Italy, Deugro Saudi Arabia and Deugro Air Chartering to provide it with backup. Given the scope of the project, only Antonov An-124-100 aircraft were considered.
“Thanks to Deugro’s long-standing strategic relationship with the Antonov Airlines team, and despite the severe shortage of these aircraft in light of the military conflict in Ukraine, we managed to load the units on the required dates,” is how Pavel Kuznetsov, who is in charge of Deugro’s air charter business, described the additional challenge he faced.
But that wasn’t all either. Whilst the heat exchangers – the most important element in the entire consignments – were being collected from the supplier near Milan, the customer also informed the logistician of the requirement to pick up a fan cover from another supplier in the Netherlands at short notice.
Many substantial challenges
This part was then loaded during a stopover at Belgium’s Ostend Bruges airport. In the end the first two flights, which departed directly for Dammam from Milan Malpensa airport, had three consignments each on board, weighing a total of 86 and 72 t respectively. The third flight first loaded three units from Italy weighing a total of 68 t, and then added a fourth one weighing 26 t in Belgium.
Unloading the equipment in Dammam took only three to five hours each time. Thanks to coordination between the customer, the airport operator and the GHA, Deugro Saudi Arabia managed to rapidly on-forward the cargo to its destination 100 km away.