LOGISTICS
The singer’s world tour last year required the equivalent of EVENT
© Aphotostudio - stock.adobe.com ROCKand roll
Rock-it Cargo keeps broadening its
scope of high-octane project logistics,
writes Ian Putzger.
When Paul Martins
left MNX Global
Logistics last year to
join concert logistics specialist
Rock-it Cargo, in a way it was
a return to his roots. Before
he embarked on a career in
logistics his focus had been
on music, a journey that
began in his childhood and
took him to the New England
Conservatory and a stint with
the Boston Opera Company
as a trumpet player, besides
numerous performances and
gigs with bands.
His other passion was
aviation, which led him
into the air cargo business.
While he was working for
UPS Airlines, Rock-it fi rst
came up on his radar, as the
music logistics specialist
would charter UPS freighters
at weekends. It marked the
beginning of a friendship
with Rock-it founder David
Bernstein, who handed over
the President and CEO mantle
last summer to Martins and
became company Chairman.
In his previous role at
the helm of MNX, Martins
was used to high-speed
logistics. The company
specialises in time-critical
movement of urgent
healthcare shipments like
organs, bio-pharmaceuticals
and radiotherapy products,
which require top speed and
precision. Rock music events
like Elton John’s farewell tour
or an Asian tour of U2 are not
a matter of life and death, but
the logistics around them have
a similar intensity. Everything
is dictated by the need to
have all pieces in place for the
moment when the lights go on
over the stage.
“Failure is not an option,”
asserts Martins.
At the same time, though,
it is always lurking along the
route. Inevitably there are
hiccoughs along the way. The schedule of a Rolling Stones tour
was thrown into disarray when Mick Jagger suffered a medical
problem. The band decided to go on with the tour, but the
calendar became extremely tight, necessitating shifting a lot of
the transportation to faster options.
“The show must go on, so we have to make sure we have an
option B if option A doesn’t work, an option C - and an option
D,” remarks Martins.
All this requires personnel who blend precision with a high
degree of fl exibility and ample enthusiasm for what they are doing.
“Our people have to be well trained and passionate,” he admits.
Challenges of the big tour
Live performances are occurring thick and fast. “Last year
was incredible. We had a convergence of a lot of big tours,”
recalls Martins. He adds that, according to projections from
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the tour market will continue to grow at
a rate of 3.5% for the next few years.
He notes also that the importance of concert tours has
undergone a fundamental change. “In the past, performers went
on tour to support an album, which is where they made the
highest returns, whereas now they go into the studio to support
the tour and the merchandise they sell on the tour. Audiences
want to see them live. They want to see the whole show, with
all the lights, the pyrotechnics, the bands behind them. It’s no
longer what they can do in the studio,” he reveals.
As a result, the amount of equipment shipped to the concert
venues has grown exponentially. For gigs relating to Taylor
Swift’s Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018, two An-124 freighters
were deployed to carry staging equipment between airports in
Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The logistics called for uplift
of 635 tonnes within 36 hours from Brisbane to Auckland, which
required six An-124 fl ights on the sector, followed by three fl ights
from New Zealand to Tokyo.
24 February 2020 www.airlogisticsinternational.com
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