Projects

Slug Catcher Project – Kazakhstan – 2024

Blue Bell Shipping (BBS) has delivered a mammoth airfreight project into Kazakhstan which involved the movement of over 3200mt of pipe and accessories via air charter from multiple origins (UAE, China, South Korea) up to Kazakhstan on short notice.

Over the span of 3 months, BBS has chartered 52 flights for this project, this included x3 AN124s, x18 IL76s, x25 B747-Fs, x2 B777s and x3 B737s-800Fs.

The oilfield operator had a critical situation for their ongoing project and to overcome potentially lengthy delays due to the current red sea crises, Blue Bell Shipping was able to mobilize this large number and variety of aircrafts on short notice to be able to mitigate this situation by ensuring a continuous supply of pipe & fittings to the site to prevent tremendously costly delays.

Its important to note that due to airport restrictions, aircraft availability and the need to try optimize cost for the client, BBS utilised numerous different airports for each aircraft type to ensure the availability of ground handling equipment and supporting facilities for each flight. This was organised and re-visited prior to each and every one of the 45 flights and optimized depending on the type of cargo and aircraft used.

  • X18 IL76s were chartered from Fujairah Airport (FJR) to Aktau Airport (SCO)
  • X3 AN124s were chartered from Dubai World Central (DWC) Airport to Atyrau Airport (GUW)
  • X2 B777s were chartered from Dubai International Airport (DXB) to Aktau Airport (SCO)
  • X2 B747s were chartered from Incheon Airport (ICN) to Dubai World Central (DWC) Airport
  • X2 B777s were chartered from Shanghai Pudong Airport (PVG) to Dubai International Airport (DXB)
  • X25 B747s were chartered from Dubai International Airport (DXB) to Atyrau Airport (GUW)

All x45 flights were delivered within a 3 month period to minimize the client’s losses. To facilitate this schedule, 5 different aircraft types and 5 different origin airports were used so that we could overcome aircraft availability and also ground handling equipment availability while also minimizing the total cost.

Moving this much cargo in such a short timeframe given the unique nature of the cargo (not every aircraft can carry this) has been a huge challenge and this final logistics solution has separated us from many competitors and proven to be one of the most challenging airfreight solutions the company has conducted.