Logistics champions
DP World and Rock-it Cargo team up for team sports. This year saw the Olympic Games and sailing’s America’s Cup staged in front of huge audiences. The logistics preparations for two future major sporting events are already underway today. The corresponding contracts were signed recently.
Sailing teams from eleven nations launched the 2024-2025 SailGP championship in Dubai’s Mina Rashid district on 23 and 24 November this year. The event also represented the start of a logistics partnership between DP World and SailGP announced a few days earlier. The location wasn’t a coincidence – the port nearby belongs to the DP World subsidiary P & O Marinas.
DP World will deploy its global team of 115,000 employees working in 78 countries to provide SailGP with comprehensive end-to-end logistics services on every continent over the next three years. DP World’s tasks include managing ocean freight, courier and route optimisation solutions.
The company’s network of warehousing, lorry, rail and inland waterway transport capacities will also support the implementation of SailGP’s racing schedule.
SailGP is the latest high-profile – and logistically demanding – sports competition to be supported by DP World. In 2023, the logistics services provider already transported more than 20 containers with more than 10,000 pieces of golf equipment to Rome (Italy) for the Ryder Cup. On top of this it also played a key logistics role for the host of the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup in the USA this summer.
The USA will also be at the heart of 2026’s football World Cup, which will be held there, as well as in Canada and Mexico. In mid-November Rock-it Cargo was named the winner of an invitation to tender for the role of the tournament’s official logistics services provider.
“The largest sports event ever”
The decisive factor in favour of the company, which is part of the Global Critical Logistics corporation, was its “outstanding experience in the planning and implementation of logistics for complex sports and entertainment events,” according to Fifa, the Zurich-based world football body.
Rock-it Cargo will plan and manage logistics services, including customs clearance, freight haulage, storage, delivery, operations in the broadcasting centre and managing teams’ equipment.
A trial run for the multi-year partnership will take place next year, when Rock-it Cargo will support Fifa’s Club World Cup, set to take place in twelve US stadiums in June and July 2025.