world - Kuehne + Nagel

24 Markets & Products
Gas turbines to the Urals:
“Mission acco
A year and a half of preparations
for a journey through the
heart of Russia: Relying on their
know-how, Kuehne + Nagel's
project logistics experts safely
moved a giant gas turbine with
all its accessories from Sweden
to the Urals.
The destination of the heavy lift was
Glazov, a town more than a thousand
kilometres to the east of Moscow in the
Republic of Udmurtia, a part of the
Russian Federation.
On such out-of-the-way routes, every
detail of a transport operation must be
minutely planned. That is why the Kuehne
+ Nagel team already began the first
on-the-spot surveys in the spring of
2004 – eighteen months before the
transport was due to take place. It was
planned to carry the turbine by ship
from Sweden across the Baltic and via
Russian inland waterways to Perm, the
river port nearest to the Urals. This was
a logical choice, for Perm is located on
the Kama river, a tributary of the Volga.
From there the load was to be moved
overland by heavy load transporters to
Glazov.
But that was easier said than done. The
many inspections of the roads between
Perm and Glazov had confirmed that a
large part of the cargo could be shipped
to the port and carried on from there without
serious problems. But the challenge
was getting the heavy items across
the Kama river. The 300 metre-long
bridge would almost certainly have collapsed
under the enormous weight of
the gas turbine, the generator and the
transport vehicles. There was no way the
bridge could be reinforced. So what was
to be done? The solution was to transfer
the units onto a pontoon barge – a floating
platform – which was pulled by a tug
boat to a point further up the Kama river
where a landing place to roll the
vehicles with the heavy components off
the barge via a ramp was prepared. For
the landing operation the team needed
a location with a sufficient depth of
water and firm river banks. In order to
achieve the required depth it was necessary
to dredge the river. This was preceded
by a thorough survey of the river
Kuehne + Nagel World No. 1/2006