The award ceremony took place on January 18, 2024 in front of 550 guests in London, UK. The Air Cargo Services award recognized deugro’s performance in the safe, timely and efficient delivery of urgent industrial equipment from Thailand to the USA in support of an urgent plant start-up and against a backdrop of a variety of challenges.

Despite scarce capacities on the heavy lift air charter market caused by the war in the Ukraine, deugro located and secured aircraft that was not only available at the right place at the right time, but which also allowed for loading the oversized equipment with extremely odd dimensions and complex shapes—with lengths of up to 36.6 meters, widths of up to 5.5 meters and heights of up to 4.4 meters. To match the cargo components and their requirements with the different aircraft types, loading devices and airport capacities, deugro provided tailored packaging solutions, developed various safe and efficient loading concepts and sourced additional loading equipment. Altogether, nine charter flights were performed to transport the urgent components with a total volume of 213 metric tons (1,628 cubic meters).

Besides the critical transportation of the cargo by aircraft, including the procurement and provision of loading equipment, deugro ensured the timely and smooth delivery of the oversized cargo components to the departure airport in Thailand and from the arrival airport in the USA to the plant. This included detailed road surveys and the removal of obstacles, the timely organization of all required permits, including gate passes and appropriate approvals for the smooth entry of cargo, cranes and trailers into the airports, as well as the organization of police escorts.

“After a successful 2023, this award from the prestigious British International Freight Association right at the beginning of the new year is a great honor and a good start to the new year for us,” said Mark Riley, UK Country Manager, deugro.

“This award is a testament to the great minds at deugro—our teams in Thailand and the USA who executed this complex project flawlessly, our dedicated global Air Chartering team with their unparallelled knowledge and connections with airlines, as well as the great transport engineering and on-site support received from our sister company dteq,” added Gert Jensen, Senior Vice President Operations, deugro USA.