Giant Pipes Present a Project Freight Forwarding Challenge Against the Clock

UK – TURKEY – As anyone who has had to handle them will know large pipe sections can be most awkward to handle, even the sturdiest of steel tubes can be damaged by the slightest knock to its extremities, rendering it useless. So when a 35 tonne shipment from Scotland to Turkey was offered to Volga-Dnepr Airlines the company drew on its own team of experts in Ulyanovsk, Russia and London Stansted to coordinate another large project freight forwarding exercise.

The Russian air carrier moved the cargo aboard one of its IL-76TD-90VD freighters to Istanbul, taking a mere three days from the initial customer enquiry to delivery of the shipment. The oil production equipment was delivered on behalf of DHL Global Forwarding to Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen International Airport. It will be used in exploration and drilling projects looking for new oil and gas fields on the Black Sea shelf in Turkey. Huseyn Mammadli, Logistics Executive, ELC, Volga-Dnepr Group commented:

“After receiving an urgent customer request, our engineers in Ulyanovsk developed a load plan and multi-purpose shipping cradle to load the cargo of 19-metre pipes and the manufacturing of the cradle was organised by our Stansted team. Whilst this was in progress, Volga-Dnepr’s Engineering and Logistics Center made all the arrangements to rent cranes for the loading as well as a trailer to deliver the pipes to Prestwick Airport.

“Extra loading equipment was also delivered from Leipzig, Germany, especially for this flight. Despite a strong 20mph wind in Prestwick on the day of the loading, the technical crew of the aircraft completed the hardest part of the project by promptly building up the loading complex on the trailer and in the aircraft, fixing the pipes in the cradle and then lifting them into the cargo hold.”

Photo: The giant pipes sit snugly in the body of the freighter.