March 26 - Panprojects - the specialised project cargo division of international freight forwarder Panalpina - saw its turnover grow 20 percent year-on-year during 2013.
Panprojects was declared one of the fastest growing areas of Panalpina's business and, with the transport and logistics cost for a single industrial project expected to cross the USD1 billion mark in the near future, it will continue to be one of the most important.
Panprojects can be working on as many as 40 large scale-industrial projects at any one time and it has recently been involved in a project in Azerbaijan, where it shipped components for a topside unit for an offshore oil platform.
The West Chirag platform, which is operated by oil and gas exploration firm BP, has since been deployed to the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli field in the Caspian Sea for final assembly and installation
Panprojects started its work on the platform in late 2012 and since then it has handled more than 2,000 international and local transports. Specialised equipment, machinery and components continue to be transported by road, air and sea to the site. Panprojects says the development involves a large number of critical, fast-track moves from all over the world, including the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, the US and across Asia.
"The importance of on-time delivery at large projects cannot be stressed enough," said Chris Kent, global head of Panprojects. "Delays at multi-million dollar projects mean excessive and avoidable cost. Monitoring is therefore crucial to give shippers transparency but also to maintain a high quality service. We also analyse our own performance to identify potential shortfalls and continually improve our operations."
