Prologus, SFN Member in Poland, recently successfully moved 184 trailers, 57 tractors, 15 bulldozers and 1 grader.

Bartosz Kowalczyk, Seafreight Manager, gave some more details:

"Prologus recently completed some shipments for URSUS, the agriculture tractors manufacturer in Poland.

In September we ended last shipment to Ethiopia via Djibouti. We were responsible for URSUS – Ethiopian Sugar Corporation contract for delivery of 57 tractors and 184 trailers for Sugar Cane – total: 161 x 40 Open Top and 172 x 40HC containers.

Specifics:

First we loaded train with 15 tractors as we had very little time to make it on the contract deadline. We arranged the train near URSUS premises in Lublin and sent the cargo to Bremerhaven, Germany for the RO-RO vessel. RO-RO vessel from Germany was much faster then container ship from Poland so we had to chose this mode of transport because of lack of time. The loading went smoothly as the units were self propelled.

After this first shipment we had more time to prepare and to recalcucalte costs to make the transport the most economically efficient. We recommended disassembling the tractors and trailers to fit them into standard 40HC containers and 40OT containers and finally we continued to send the cargo this way until the end of contract. It saved some costs and as URSUS has its own assembly line in Ethiopia so it wasn't a problem to put the cargo back all together as the consignee ordered fully operational units. It was really hard to gather nearly 160 Open Top containers in Gdansk, Poland as it is special equipment which is very rare in our country.

2 years ago we transported nearly 500 x 40HC containers for the same shipper to Ethiopia and it was the beginning of our African adventure. Having the experience and support from our clients we decided to focus on African market which is very promising for the Polish companies. We would welcome cooperation with our African partners within Specialist Freight Network, to seek for more mutual business opportunities.

Please visit www.prologus.pl for more information."