One of the founding PCN members, Interfracht Air Sea Land Service are representatives in Germany and Japan. They have recently handled four reactors each weighing 800 tns transported from Japan to Belarus.

The massive project included a three-year planning period with the Interfracht Hamburg and Tokyo offices working closely together. The reactors travelled across a distance of 17,500km from Japan, then via the Black Sea, followed by a river voyage on the Dnieper River in Ukraine all the way through to Mozyr in Belarus. Tobias Karrasch (Managing Director at Interfracht Hamburg) andKazuhiro Furukawa (General Manager at Interfracht Japan)explain; "Four special barges, a 10 km heavy duty road and the unloading pier were designed and built exclusively for this movement. The huge reactors measured 50 x 7.2 x 5.5m".

"The cargo was loaded at Higashi Harima in Japan and transported to Kherson in Ukraine by MV Trina of SAL Line. There, the shipment was loaded onto special barges specially constructed by Marine Digital. The pontoons were towed along the Dnieper River from Kherson to the landing stage. Due to the unstable political situation in Ukraine, this particular segment of the haulage was extremely challenging and the exact location of the goods was constantly inspected and monitored using the most advanced technology. Also, to make the shipment an even bigger achievement, heavy storms in Eastern Europe resulted in flooding at the destination site. Therefore a protective dam was especially built around the landing stage and the final road haulage was then carried out using a 64-axle SPMT, having to overcome inclines of up to 12%".

Tobias and Kazuhiro would like to thank everyone involved for their outstanding cooperation and commitment after this successful delivery.

www.interfracht.de