Over the last days of May and the start of June this year, two IFLN Network forwarders – Romania’s Master Mind and Vietnam’s Mekong Cargo Freight (MCF) – collaborated on the shipment of vital personal protective equipment (PPE) from Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam to Bucharest in Romania.

A charter flight arranged by Master Mind flew a consignment of face masks badly needed in Europe during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic from Tan Son Nhat International to Henri Coanda International, about 10 miles north of the Romanian capital.

A B767 of Uzbekistan Airlines operated the spot charter. The shipment weighed in at over 42 tons, and had a volume of 307 cubic meters.

The latter’s local partner in Vietnam was MCF. According to Chau Thi Cam Hue, air freight manager in its Ho Chi Minh office: “With only three or four days from charter confirmation with ETD and ETA, we closely coordinated with all necessary parties.” There was close liaison with Master Mind, the charter broker, the relevant agent of the Vietnam Aviation Department and the airport terminal, she recalls.

The cargo agent ensured that all ground handling at Tan Son Nhat proceeded smoothly, with MCF staff at the gateway as the flight arrived. MCF oversaw the cargo’s delivery to the airport terminal, ensured that all the required documentation was completed and that all Customs requirements were met.

Despite the challenges of what Hue remarks was a huge workload that needed to be undertaken in a very short space of time: “Mekong and Master Mind coordinated carefully to successfully operate the charter from SGN to OTP,” she says. “Handled smoothly, we met our client’s requirement for a short transit time, with the cargo delivered to the consignee as expected.”

She continues: “Master Mind is a very professional partner that luckily we had an opportunity to co-operate with.

“Mekong has arranged many charters [in the past] and so we are confident we can do so again upon any such request from a client or partner, dealing with charter brokers/airlines directly and applying for charter slots from the Vietnam Aviation Department.”

Established in January 1997, MCF is a fully private-licensed company specializing in international sea and air freight forwarding. Most of its offices are strategically located at major ports and airports in Vietnam; its headquarters is in Ho Chi Minh City, in the south of Vietnam, but it also has branches in Da Nang in central Vietnam and in Hanoi and Hai Phong in the north of the country.

As well as handling air and sea shipments of all kinds, MCF is also well known for its related services such as Customs brokerage, consolidation, inland haulage, door-to-door delivery and project cargo shipping.

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