WORLD CAMEL HERITAGE FESTIVAL

The world’s biggest camel festival, held under the patronage of King Salman, is held 120 kilometers northeast of Riyadh.

CATEGORY: Arts, Live Events
CLIENT: Filmmaster MEA LLC
PROJECT NAME: King Abdulaziz World Camel Heritage Festival
OPERATOR: Callum Knight - (Boston USA)
METHOD: Air & Land
SHIPMENT: 300+ Tonnes
CONTENTS: Tents, Infrastructure, Carpet / Fabrics, Video, Sound, Lights, Radios

THE BRIEF:

Filmmaster MEA LLC approached Sound Moves with a complex and time sensitive brief to transport over 300 tons of freight consisting of tents, infrastructure, video, sound and lighting to the Middle East.

MAJOR CHALLENGE:

There was a two week turnaround from project confirmation to first delivery, needless to say we had to get arrangements in quickly. On top of this the Saudi customs procedures can be a challenge, we had learnt from previous experience that duty payment (“Bayan”) is always a lengthy process. Our final big challenge was to get 38 main deck video carts from L.A to Riyadh door to door in one week!

SOLUTIONS CREATED:

We created a duty float for the “Bayan” of which our local agent paid to customs at the borders. This really sped up the clearance process. We also placed brokers on the Sila border (Dubai side) Batha border (Saudi side) as well as at Riyadh airport for the airfreight.

For the challenge posed by the main deck freight, we utilised a freighter from Los Angeles to Luxembourg. On arrival into Luxembourg we trucked the freight onward to Amsterdam, where we had pre-booked a second freighter aircraft to Riyadh. This allowed us to deliver considerably under the cost of a full charter from LAX to RUH which was the only other option due to the time constraints.