heavy-lift
While many air freight service providers around the world have plenty of experience when it comes to handling very heavy pieces of cargo and other project traffic, the challenges associated with that business are continuing to grow. Phillip Hastings reports
project work bearing the load
locations involved is continually expanding and the regulations governing the movement of such shipments are being further tightened. So what is driving the growth in heavy and other
M 20 AIR LOGISTICS CHINA
project cargo shipments by air? Why do companies in the energy and power generation industries, in particular, sometimes opt to use air freight rather than lower cost surface transport such as ocean or road to move very large and heavy pieces of equipment, for planned projects as well as in emergencies? “Oil and gas industry projects, for
instance, often require special and highly efficient transport solutions as the client has large sums of money at stake,” explains Thomas Bek, global manager for the oil and gas division of Danish international project forwarder Blue Water Shipping. “There can be penalties for companies involved in such projects if there are delays or bonuses if they complete
uch of the cargo being carried by air is getting progressively larger and heavier, new types of outsize equipment such as wind turbine blades are appearing in the market, the range of source/destination
certain milestones ahead of time so often it can actually be cost-effective to use air freight.” One example of such an air freight movement by Blue
Water Shipping last year involved chartering two 15-tonne capacity AN-12 freighters to move 30 tonnes of excavation equipment from Houston to Trinidad for deployment in offshore oil and gas production work. Bek said that in addition to moving heavy items of
cargo, air freight is also used to support major development projects where the largest pieces of equipment are being moved by sea. “In addition to heavy-lift, a lot of these projects also involve regular containers,” he observed. To illustrate that point,
Bek cited an agreement Blue Water Shipping had signed with Dutch company SBM Offshore
The nose-loading capability of the AN-124 allows extra-long loads to be carried
last year covering all the logistics associated with a project to convert a VLCC
(very large crude carrier) into an FPSO (floating storage, production and off-loading) for eventual charter to
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32