What would have been an extremely costly downtime for a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia was prevented as deugro successfully delivered 13 plant components from Italy and Belgium to Saudi Arabia within seven days.

Due to the dimensions of the cargo, which were heat exchanger modules, the best way to transport them was with Antonov aircraft, preferably an AN-225, which were in shortage due to the military conflict in Ukraine. So, the biggest challenge was to secure the required aircraft in time.

deugro managed to deploy the AN-124-100 to operate air charter flights from Italy and Belgium to Saudi Arabia, and this had other technical challenges in itself which the forwarder explained:

“As the cargo hold of an AN-124-100 is not fully pressurized, the deugro team carefully checked with the suppliers’ engineers to ensure that the in-flight conditions in the cargo hold, including the temperature and pressure change rates, were suitable for the modules to be transported.”

“Furthermore, several modules were too heavy to be lifted with the on-board crane of the AN-124-100, meaning the loading and offloading had to be executed using the carrier’s special loading ramps and external mobile cranes, which deugro arranged at the origin and destination
airports on time.”

deugro chartered three flights in total to transport the heat exchanger modules, which were picked up in Italy near Milan, as well as the short-notice delivery request for a fan casing in The Netherlands, which was added during a stopover at Ostend-Bruges Airport in Belgium.

The first two flights from Italy to Saudi Arabia each contained three packages with a total weight of 86.81 and 71.50 metric tonnes respectively. The third flight contained three packages with a total weight of 67.50 metric tonnes, which were loaded in Milan, and an additional four packages weighing 26.41 metric tonnes, loaded at Ostend-Bruges Airport.

Upon arrival at King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, the individual flights were quickly unloaded, taking an average of three to five hours per aircraft. The local deugro team had early and close coordination and cooperation with the plant operator, the airport authorities, and the appointed ground-handling agent to ensure a smooth and timely entry of the cranes and trailers into the airport upon arrival of all three charters.

This avoided delays in unloading and ensured the subsequent 100-kilometre on-carriage and delivery of the cargo to the construction site according to the agreed schedule.