Mission to Shanghai at height of pandemic

Andrew Coldrey talks about the challenges of shipping medical supplies from China in Victoria’s virus fight.

C.H. Robinson vice-president Andrew Coldrey. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Trucks were backed up for three days at the gates of Shanghai airport in May, each waiting their turn for their slim window to connect with flights as the world scrambled to respond to coronavirus.

The Victorian government, like many around the world, was gearing up for a viral pandemic that, in worst-case scenarios, would be expected to kill tens of thousands.

Health Purchasing Victoria, the procurement arm of the state government’s health department, needed gloves, masks, gowns, and face shields, but securing them required a herculean effort.

The PPE needed to be sourced, transported by truck to the airport, before being loaded onto flights, some of them passenger jets empty of tourists after the outbreak of COVID-19 effectively ended travel to Australia.

Logistics company C.H. Robinson Oceania was brought in to manage the airlift of PPE needed in Victoria’s hospitals.

The first flight, a Boeing 747-400, touched down at the beginning of May with 650 cubic metres of PPE onboard, marking the beginning of an airlift that would see 12 more flights out of Shanghai.

C.H. Robinson vice-president Oceania Andrew Coldrey said the airlift out of Shanghai was a near- run thing, but none left empty and all deliveries arrived on time.

“When you think about it globally, passenger flights almost stopped, you’d think airports would have capacity,” he said.

“But freighters were still flying and all of a sudden you’ve got additional charters coming on and the physical space for charters can’t expand and everything still needs to be screened and checked.”

But the problem was bigger, as Chinese customs authorities instituted a clampdown on PPE leaving the country after several shipments destined for the front lines of the fight against the virus proved ineffective, fake or faulty.

“Because you had a lot of new suppliers trying to satisfy demand there were a lot of people providing less than acceptable product, so the Chinese government was quite cautious to make sure the product leaving was what they said it was. That slows things down a lot,” Mr Coldrey said.

“So you need to make sure you’ve got people on the ground who can navigate that, which is all the more important when you’ve got an aircraft on the ground waiting.”

He said managing the sheer volume and complexity of sourcing PPE from multiple manufacturers, shipping it out of China, as well as several flights from Malaysia, and receiving it all in Australia was a challenge. “It’s been an incredible effort by everyone, we look at the case numbers around COVID-19 and we get a bit complacent about the situation we find ourselves in,” he said.

Mr Coldrey said the project manager in charge of the operation put in 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, all through April to get what was needed.

“Sometimes people forget, these aren’t done in normal working hours, it’s people working weekends, nights, to make it happen,” he said.

“We had to co-ordinate additional trucking on this end, that was happening through weekends and nights. Our people in Melbourne came in during the night and volunteered.

The effort isn’t over yet but the immediate crisis has passed, with PPE destined for Victoria now on ships heading out of China.

“People see it all moving and arriving OK, but they don’t see the duckfeet under the water paddling furiously to make it all happen,” he said.