deugro arranged three full-charter flights for its client Tecnimont from Milan, Italy to Blagoveshchensk, Russia to transport 87 metric tons of time-critical valve equipment for the Amur Gas Processing Plant Project in Russia.

deugro said the schedules were exactly planned in accordance with equipment ready dates at manufacturing sites to support ongoing construction at the project site.

"deugro was awarded the delivery of urgent equipment directly to the project site because the impact of COVID-19 forced the client to switch the mode of transportation from road to air to keep the time schedule of the site construction," the freight forwarded said.

While the transit time for land transportation would have resulted in around 35 days, air transportation allowed the time to be shortened to less than 20 hours for each flight.  

For the transportation, deugro’s experts chose the Ilyushin Il-76, a ramp cargo aircraft which offers a large cargo hold and the ability of self-sufficient loading and offloading using the on-board internal crane system.

For each flight, deugro said it arranged the pick-up from the suppliers’ facilities and the delivery to Malpensa Airport in Milan, Italy by road.

"One important ingredient to the success of this complex transport was the ability to organize these air charter flights with our own internal air charter desk — something that deugro has invested in by building a team of experts well-known in the industry and with a cargo airline and air charter brokerage background," said Marco Furgada, branch manager, Segrate/Milam, deugro Italy. 

"Decades of experience in air chartering and a deep understanding of how it works from the airline or air charter brokerage background allowed deugro’s team to arrange a flawless operation and carefully manage every last-moment challenge, which is always part of the game when it comes to arranging urgent operations by air," Furgada added.