Air Charter Service (ACS) helped transport over 100 tons of hops from Germany to assist a beer manufacturer in Mexico facing supply chain issues.

Marco Circosta, chief executive officer of ACS Mexico, said the company was contacted by its freight forwarder customer in Mexico, who's client had seven of its breweries urgently requiring several tons of hops each for producing their beers.

"Their regular supply of hops comes from Germany, where there had been a wave of strikes in the weeks prior, meaning there was a huge backlog, which is why they required a whole charter," he added.

Circosta went on to note that "the hops needed to be in Mexico within four days of the customer first contacting us, so we quickly got to work sourcing a large enough aircraft, that was not only available, but could also obtain permits in the tight timeframe."

"An added consideration was that the temperature of the 136 pallets of hops had to be kept between 0 and 7 degrees Celsius throughout the operation," he added.

"The six truckloads of cargo arrived at Liege Airport in Belgium, where the Boeing 747-400F that we had sourced was waiting. After the cargo was loaded onto the temperature-controlled aircraft, it departed — via a fuel stop at New York's JFK — for Felipe Ángeles International, just north of Mexico City, where it was met by refrigerated trucks and delivered well within the timeframe," Circosta said.