adminpast 20 years. Thus, it has become common to see “packages” such as live animals, specially prepared food or lifesaving medicines being transported across the continent.
Looking back over the past year, Sumesh Rahavendra, head of marketing for DHL Express sub-Saharan Africa, says that the increase in requests to transport various endangered animals was particularly noteworthy, as well as some unique personal client requests.
An unusual personal request came from Nigeria, where a client also paid the airfare for an on-board courier to travel with a birthday cake from Abuja to Lagos, with the airfare amounting to about three times the value of the cake.
The client put a significant premium on the need to have the cake delivered at a particular period of the day and was prepared to pay for it.
During 2012, an entire prepared five-course dinner for eight people at a function in Zimbabwe was transported. This was because certain dishes were not available in the country.
The company regularly transports various types of medical materials, using specialised products and processes to ensure their viability.
“Increasingly, we see the need for cross-border and continental transportation of items like rare tissue samples, urgent medical equipment or organs,” says Rahavendra.
“We have dedicated people who manage these types of shipments — whether it is ensuring a heart is transported from Europe to Kenya for an urgent transplant, a part for an important medical scanner is rushed across the world to fix that machine or, as I personally saw recently, some tissue samples were carried from South Africa to the USA for an operation to save a little boy named Juan with a rare degenerative disease.”
A major highlight in 2012 was moving three endangered black rhinos from the UK to the Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania. The 10-hour journey from Manston, UK airport to Tanzania included a refuelling stop in Italy and took place aboard a specially outfitted Boeing 757.
Special accommodation included specialised life-saving devices and temperature-controlled conditions in the cabin, and the transport team included two rhino keepers, two aircraft engineers and a specialist veterinarian. “It’s very special that we can use our core capability of logistics to support such valuable conservation efforts,” says Rahavendra.
On a global front, DHL also recently delivered two Sumatran tigers — one from the US and one from Australia – to take part in an international breeding program.
With fewer than 300 Sumatran tigers now in the wild, ZSL London Zoo is hoping to breed the tigers as part of a wider conservation support programme and enlisted the help of DHL Express to transport the tigers.
Rahavendra explains that although the company has fulfilled many strange delivery requests and transports everything from lions to livers, there are certain restrictions when it comes to global express.
“We work with customs and authorities in over 220 countries worldwide and each of these have different regulations around the products you can import and export, and restrictions around certain items,” he says. “This means we can’t courier everything ‘at all costs’ and have restrictions on items like jewellery, precious metals, firearms and ammunition, as well as specific embargoes on products in certain countries.”
These restrictions are also in place to protect the company’s network, and general civilians.
“We move hundreds of millions of packages every year and, with this, comes the need for incredibly tight security. While we use our own dedicated network of 250 aircraft and over 30 000 vehicles to move shipments, we sometimes make use of commercial airlines which carry passengers.
“Outside of ensuring our own operational network is safe through scans, physical checks, cameras, security personnel and the myriad of other measures we take every day, we are also responsible for the well-being of our customers and general consumers, and we take this responsibility incredibly seriously.”
Online Reporter