Bringing National Japanese Television to the FIFA Women’s World Cup

Direct broadcasts are time-sensitive. Therefore, all equipment needed to arrive intact. Thus, everything had to follow the exact schedule for NHK to be ready for direct broadcast at the World Cup.

With no room for deviations, we arranged the delivery end-to-end. From packing and crating in Japan to warehousing for all the equipment in Canada, transportation and finally, setting up the NHK “camp” at Vancouver, Edmonton and Winnipeg stadiums. The total shipment consisted of a broadcasting Van and two 20’ containers (SOCs) by RORO Vessel, and about 15 tons of airfreight.

24/7 logistics service during the entire tournament

For two months, our staff was on standby in Canada to assist NHK 24/7 with supervising and ensuring everything worked as planned. At first, the broadcasting camp was set up at Winnipeg Stadium to cover two matches on June 8. Then, it was taken down and moved to Vancouver by June 12 to cover another five matches, afterwards to Edmonton by June 27 to cover 16 games and finally back to Vancouver by July 5 to cover the finals between USA and Japan.

“It is genuinely logistics in top gear, as the time between each match is short and the distance between each venue is far, says Henrik Irmov, Managing Director of Scan Global Logistics in Japan.

Next stop – New York

Right after the final whistle of the final match between the USA and Japan, where the USA came out as champions, and all interviews with players were done, all equipment was repacked. Part of the equipment was returned to Japan by air. The rest, the broadcasting van, one container and other equipment, was transported approximately 4800 kilometres by truck from Vancouver to New York, where our next mission with the NHK began - this time covering the MLB baseball opening games at Yankee Stadium!

Thank you very much indeed to Scan Global Logistics for their arrangement and support during this project in Canada and U.S.A. Even though our cargo is complicated and difficult to handle, your operation was excellent and perfect and everything went very smoothly. I would like to say special thanks to the Japanese SGL staffs attending this project in Canada, as timely and helpful advice was given when we faced trouble, and we could close any issue immediately. Different from previous forwarders handling similar projects for us, your ideas and proposals were various and we could learn much from your advices. You followed up by daily reports, which made me feel we did not have to worry about anything in regards to the logistic operation. Once again, thank you for standing by us and I hope to work together with SGL again for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro 2016.

Mr. Yuji Oguri
Senior Manager, NHK, Team director for the FIFA project