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When emergency supplies have to be delivered, you want a partner that will meet the challenges head on.
One of our customers needed help to send emergency supplies to Jamaica after a hurricane left communities without basic supplies. They had an LNG carrier standing by offshore Central America to deliver the goods, and they asked our team in Panama to source and get the goods onboard.
Our Mission:
Procure, purchase and transport humanitarian aid including water bottles, chainsaws, cement and canned food to the Port of Cristobal, to be packed into pallets for transportation and loading onto the waiting vessel.
Challenges:
The call came as Panama started its Independence holiday weekend. Banks, customs authorities and immigration facilities were closed, and parades blocked main roads.
The vessel is designed to carry liquid gas, not palletised cargo.
It couldn’t berth shoreside due to its size and nature, nor could it wait in the Panama Canal inner anchorage as it was not due to transit.
Solutions:
Our husbandry and procurement team contacted local vendors to urgently source and deliver the goods to the port.
We arranged for customs officers and a crew of stevedores to be on site to receive the cargo as it came in.
A loading and storage plan was devised, dividing the goods into pallets - each weighing no more than 900kg – to be transported to the vessel offshore. The description, weight, reference number and photo of each pallet was recorded to ensure traceability.
The pallets were loaded onto a barge with a push tug and crane, to take them to the carrier waiting outside the port breakwater and lifted them onto the deck.
Bunker fuels, crew changes and spare parts were also delivered.
Job done!
In less than 6 days including the holiday weekend, 120 tonnes of emergency relief in 135 pallets were loaded onto the vessel for delivery, arriving within a week of the hurricane making landfall.
Learn how GAC can help your urgent shipments reach their destination fast at https://www.gac.com/sectors/time-critical.
