A scheduled shutdown of a deep-water oil platform is no small undertaking. The planning involved to ensure teams are able to complete the maintenance tasks in the needed timeframe is critical. And with a plan for 60 days of maintenance, every additional day of lost production due to delays translates into considerable losses for the operator. For one Panalpina customer, their entire maintenance plan would have been derailed if not for Panalpinas innovative African Star solution for transporting large shipments from the U.S. to Angola expeditiously.
The planned maintenance for the customers deep-water platforms in Angola was entirely dependent on the arrival of four heat exchangers from a supplier in Louisiana. All four pieces had to be on the platform by May 28 to avoid significant production losses. The customer contacted Panalpina in September 2018 to begin making plans. Since the heat exchangers were being built, the team had to work from drawings to design the plan for packing and transporting the cargo.