Along with the usual parcels, pallets, planeloads, and shipping containers, DHL Group delivered some more unusual consignments in 2024.
They included orphaned, disabled chimpanzee Chocolat from Kenya to a new home at the Monkey World Ape Rescue Centre in Dorset, UK in August, from poachers in the Congo who left her with shotgun wounds that paralyzed a hand and foot.
DHL was also licensed to deliver James Bond artefacts from the Czech Republic to Austria, for the 007 Action display in Vienna including 27 cars, eight motorcycles, costumes, parachutes, and even James Bond’s driving license. This included the Aston Martin DB5, one of the most famous cars in film history, featured in eight Bond movies from Goldfinger in 1964 to No Time to Die (2021).
In January 2024, 163 Cape and African White-backed vultures flew with DHL from a rehabilitation facility near Pretoria to the Shamwari wildlife reserve in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, largest ever relocation project for the species using two trucks along with five support and security vehicles.
The logistics company also orchestrated the London Philharmonic’s tour of Japan in September 2024, transporting some 60 valuable instruments from the UK to the Hamamatsu Act City Concert Hall in Japan, at a constant temperature of 17-21°C to prevent warping or cracking.
In February, DHL transported a complete hospital, carrying out the first ocean transport of a mobile heart clinic from Bremen, Germany, to Zacamil, El Salvador. The shipment consisted of 11 containers. With 15 days of setting up, international heart surgeons were performing free treatments to the country’s young patients. In May 2024, DHL transferred the clinic to Burundi, East Africa to continue its lifesaving mission.
