Priority Freight overcomes border delays with multimodal solution

This regular shipment usually involves road transport from the Serbian factory to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport where the goods are then flown to O.R. Tambo International Airport.

However, issues at the Serbian-Hungarian border meant the goods would be delayed and potentially halt South African production.

Priority Freight was called by the manufacturer and then formed a response team to come up with alternative shipping methods, and arrange the delivery of 890kg of parts to the South African Factory.

Rather than exit Serbia by road and face border delays, the goods were taken to Belgrade airport where they were loaded onto a waiting ATR charter aircraft and flown to Oostende in Belgium. From there the parts were transferred to another truck which drove to Amsterdam Schiphol airport to meet a long-haul commercial cargo flight bound for Johannesburg.

After 11 hours the cargo flight landed at O.R. Tambo International Airport on Saturday evening, less than 48 hours after the parts were collected from Serbia.

A twin-prop Metro plane then completed the final 600 miles from Johannesburg to East London arriving at 03:30 local time on Sunday morning, which left time for the goods to be unloaded and for the factory to recommence production the following day.