deugro successfully delivered 37 over-sized pipe spools for an urgent facility start-up, from Thailand to the US, with the support of its air charter team and local offices.
The company provided a multimodal door-to-door solution from a production facility in eastern Thailand to a facility in Houston, TX through various aircraft types and truck-trailer configurations. It took nine charter flights to transport urgent components with a total volume of 213 metric tonnes (1,628 cubic meters).
For this particular cargo, deugro explained that this is shipped by sea, or via expedited direct charter ocean freight in urgent cases; however, only transporting via air freight could meet the date needed for the cargo to be on site.
Due to the critical schedule, the forwarder designed a complex air charter solution ensuring the shortest transit time. Airports of origin and destination had to be chosen as close as possible to the supplier and the plant site, whilst the flight schedules had to be flexibly coordinated with the manufacturing plans.
“With scarce capacities on the heavy lift air charter market caused by the war in the Ukraine, the biggest challenge was locating and securing aircraft that could not only be available at the right place at the right time, but which also allowed for loading the oversized equipment with extremely odd dimensions and complex shapes, with lengths of up to 36.6 meters, widths of up to 5.5 meters and heights of up to 4.4 meters. At the same time, the cargo’s requirements had to match the varying available aircraft types, loading equipment and airport capacities,” said Pavel Kuznetsov, head of air chartering, deugro.
The executive was referring to the extra-long spools measuring 36 metres in length, which together with the truck-trailer configurations used, resulted in total lengths of up to over 45
metres. To safely move and load these oversized components, deugro sourced and mobilized. 80-tonne mobile cranes, main-deck loaders and various truck-trailer configurations.
Other preparations were also essential to ensure the delivery of the replacement components from the factory in Rayong Province to U-Tapao Airport, and then from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston onto the facility after arrival.
“To transport all components to U-Tapao airport according to schedule, and to ensure on-time loading of each aircraft and avoid delays, precise planning and preparation were essential,” said Kumphol Chatthong, Deputy General Manager, deugro Thailand.
“These included detailed road surveys and obstacle removals, timely organization of all required permits, including gate passes and appropriate approvals for smooth entry of cargo, cranes and trailers into the airport, as well as the organization of police escorts.”
“Through our close communication with the equipment manufacturer, in many meetings the cargo pickup was coordinated simultaneously, so that all operations could be successfully executed according to the strict schedule.”
