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Now that’s what I call a Down Under delivery…

[ May 27, 2020   //   ]

The Australia team of AP Moller Group forwarder Damco went to great lengths – literally – to deliver over 120 parcels of gifts and personal items to stranded scientists manning the McMurdo Station in Antarctica.

The personnel are having to spend extra months in Antarctica because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Chocolate bars, DVDs, contact lenses, and gifts from family, along with scientific equipment, were just some of the items on board the chartered A319 for delivery to the station which is managed by the United States Antarctic Program.

Damco staff went the extra mile, retrieving packages that needed collecting from several post offices to consolidate them for the flight, and in some cases personally shopping for hard-to-find items on the Antarctic team’s wish lists. Weather at McMurdo Station determines when flights can land and the DAMCO team had only 48 hours’ notice of the flight departure.

“We were waiting for chilled items from New Zealand for the consignment and, in the end, we had just a few hours to collect and process them through Customs to meet the take-off time,” said Damco airfreight operations specialist Sharryne Schulz.

But it was all worth it in the end: “You could hear the joy over the phone when we told people their parcels were on their way.”

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