China-Slovenia airlift for medical masks

March 3rd, 2021 - The Röhlig team of Daniel Brix, Georg Hausner and Boris Brajkovic made the impossible possible in order to supply hospitals in Slovenia with medical masks on time.

The FFP2/FFP3 masks, specially made for our customer on behalf of the Slovenian government, had to reach the recipient as quickly as possible. We picked up the valuable cargo in Guangzhou/China on Sunday, January 24th, 2021, in order to deliver it to Slovenia on Tuesday, January 26th, 2021 at 1.00 p.m.. The challenge was the limited flight connections and the lack of direct connections to Slovenia. Unthinkable for some, but feasible for the Röhlig team.

Plan A initially worked: The consignment, consisting of 11 cartons, 1.301 m3 & 124 kg was routed to Frankfurt by direct flight and arrived in Frankfurt/Main on Monday evening. The originally planned direct trip to Slovenia had to be cancelled at short notice due to the high freight volume in Frankfurt, because without customs clearance there is also no onward transport. 

At this point, the recently implemented "Emergency Solutions" service unit with Plan B, headed by Boris Brajkovic, came into play. During the night, a CESSNA 208 Caravan was chartered for departure from Frankfurt-Egelsbach to Ljubljana with a flight time of 2:30 hours. The urgently needed masks were specially transported by Daniel Brix, Airfreight Operations Manager Röhlig Frankfurt (Export/Import)/Import Gateway from Frankfurt to Frankfurt-Egelsbach airport. Fortunately, thanks to the professional preparation, the customs inspection on the apron could be handled successfully - now every minute counted in order to hold the take-off at 10.00 am.

Arriving punctually at 12.20 p.m. in Ljubljana, the goods were received by Röhlig colleagues and delivered by direct drive to the destination Polzela. The delivery date was met.