Special Sturgeon fish cargo shipment goes swimmingly

There was something a bit fishy about Etihad Crystal Cargo’s latest shipment of precious goods – that’s because the Abu Dhabi-based airline was transporting live reared sturgeon for the world’s biggest caviar factory which is being built in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. 

The 22 adult sturgeon fish were flown from Frankfurt Hahn Airport to Abu Dhabi and then transported to a new 60,000 sq meter state of the art farm recently commissioned for rearing sturgeons and production of caviar in the UAE. 

Roy Kinnear, Etihad Airways’ Senior Vice President Cargo, said: “Etihad is proud of its reputation for carrying precious cargo and this now includes sturgeon fish which are on the list of global endangered species. 

“The Etihad Crystal Cargo team, working closely with our ground handling colleagues and clients, demonstrated expertise and coordination skills to ensure the fish were shipped safely from Frankfurt to their new home in the UAE.” 

Etihad’s clients in the project were the UAE-based Bin Salem Holding and United Food Technologies AG, a German company. Bin Salem and UFT are working together on the development of the world’s biggest caviar factory in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. 

Each sturgeon was transported in a specially designed container in a temperature controlled environment which was always between 10 and 15 degrees centigrade. At each stage of the process the pallets were loaded and unloaded within minutes. 

Etihad utilised one of its new A330-200 freighter aircraft, which provides state-of-the-art temperature control technology, to transport the endangered species.