The 2010 World Cup soccer tournament – a major highlight of SA’s next sporting year, and the first time the cup has been held on the continent of Africa – has been helping to keep the projects cargo division of forwarding operation, Geodis Wilson, extra busy in recent months. With more or less a year to go to the kick-off, according to MD Jan Ludolph, this global project specialist has had further successes to report since completing the logistics for the Moses Mhabida World Cup soccer stadium in Durban. This project was a first consignment consisting of the 14 000 freight tonnes of steel that made up the roof arch, and a second shipment of all the fibreglass roofing material – occupying about twenty 40-foot (12-metre) open-top containers. The third seafreight movement was the extremely unusual shipment of the cable car that will be attached to the roof arch – and is expected to be a major tourist attraction in Durban. The success of the Durban project encouraged Geodis Wilson in Cape Town to offer logistics solutions to interested parties for the Greenpoint Stadium in the Mother City. Again, the stadium roof has been the major cargo movement. This was shipments of compression, horizontal and vertical beams, all the glass required for the roof, fabric for the membrane, and a lot of accessories – this latter described by Ludolph as “the nuts and bolts of the project”. This cargo for Greenpoint Stadium – officially due to open in December – was brought in both by sea and air from all over the world. Said Ludolph: “Geodis Wilson colleagues both locally and internationally deserve recognition for being awarded the transport of the roof structures for the two stadia, as well as showing how successfully, and with what vigour, we are making things happen.”
