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One of our largest and most complicated projects to date.
Saudi is building its entertainment industry from the desert up. UCARGO was part of the huge scale operations moving over 40+ amusements rides and machinery to the event. Using AIR, ROAD, AND SEA freight as a combined effort for the largest Carnival in the world in 2019.
This project entailed; a total of 190 pieces of equipment split across – 44 shipper’s own containers, 134 trailers, and 26 air freight. With weights ranging from 4 to 24 Tonne and many out of gauge and oversized pieces of equipment, it was a project that tested our ability as a project forwarder.
Cargo needed to travel from various places across the world (which included Italy, UK, Belgium, Spain, Bremerhaven, Antwerp, Savona, Turkey, and USA) to make a very tight deadline in Riyadh to open on the 31st October 2019.
To work on this project, firstly we set up an implant into the client’s headquarters and arranged for our operational personnel to work directly onsite with the customer to get a handle on all the elements that needed to come together for the project. This was vital in building a solid schedule – to work out the viable routes, shipping schedules, as well as details on how best to ship all 190 pieces on time.
Secondly, the all-encompassing details of this project had many moving parts, it involved the whole UCARGO team. Management delegated tasks across the company, the team worked together with clear direction and organisation. From working on-site with the customer, collating all the information on the equipment, coordinating the bookings and schedules via the shipping carriers, managing invoicing and budgeting to save the client as much money as possible, to organising Saudi visas.
UCARGO’s USP has always been to have personal supervision of our projects. Both directors Paul and Tony went from port to port around Europe, and finally, Jeddah to oversee the loadings and unloading’s, the distinct benefit of this is control over shipments, and the ability to work through problems as they arose and solving them on the spot where needed – for example in Italy we had 34 trailers trying to load an overbooked vessel, having someone in situ was vital to secure the loading for all the trailers with the carrier.
Once the cargo was sailing, the transport from Jeddah port to the carnival site in Riyadh was not part of our contract, but also we discovered had not been arranged yet by our Saudi counterpart. However, our due diligence meant that we had already identified a specialist haulage company that we could use when the cargo arrived in Jeddah, this was then overseen by UCARGO directors. The journey from Jeddah to Riyadh is 1000 miles and Saudi has very strict rules regarding road transport so securing this company was key to avoiding fines and charges and was a benefit to the client and carnival.
Equipment started arriving on site as early as 2nd October and all equipment was in place two weeks before the opening, which gave us the turnaround on this project of just over 2 months.