CEVA ships a 29-tonne broken Eiffel Tower from Le Havre to Burning Man

A tower broken in two

The installation depicts the Eiffel Tower split into two parts. It is 30 metres long and 15 metres high and uses 29 tonnes of steel. It was built in Rochetrejoux in the Vendée, where it was also dismantled into numbered components, the condition for shipping it across the Atlantic.

Philippe Maindron says the lower section is meant to evoke the remains of a lost civilisation, while the upper section, rising towards the sky, stands for resilience and the possibility of a better future. At the festival a tightrope was strung between the tips of the two sections and crossed by a funambulist.

– The installation was designed so that it could be dismantled, transported and reassembled, but that does not mean moving it is a simple task. It is a complex structure made up of many numbered elements, where every detail counts – said Philippe Maindron.

Six weeks from Le Havre to Oakland

The move began on 6 May, when the components left Rochetrejoux by truck for the port of Le Havre. The containers sailed on 14 May and arrived at the port of Oakland, California, on 25 June. After discharge, CEVA moved the cargo by road to Reno, Nevada, and then on the final leg to the festival site.

Open-top containers are used for cargo that cannot be loaded through the doors of a standard box, since the open roof allows items to be lowered in by crane. The remaining equipment needed for assembly travelled in two equipment containers.

One operator from the Vendée to the desert

CEVA handled the full multimodal solution, covering road haulage in France and the United States, the ocean leg and export and import customs clearance. For cargo that has to arrive within a fixed window, a single coordinator across the whole route reduces the risk of delays at the handover points between stages.

– This is not standard cargo but a 29-tonne work of art that has to arrive within a strict timeframe and in perfect condition. Our teams on two continents coordinated a multimodal solution covering road and ocean transport, customs clearance and delivery to site – said Jesús Rogelio Garza, Head of Ground and Rail, North America, at CEVA Logistics.

Cultural cargo within the CMA CGM Group

It is not CEVA's first transatlantic art move. Together with its parent company, the CMA CGM Group, it previously transported a bronze Statue of Liberty of about 2.7 metres from France to Washington, cast from Auguste Bartholdi's original 1878 plaster model.

Jobs of this kind serve largely as a showcase for a logistics operator. They require the same procedures as out-of-gauge industrial cargo, but with less margin for error, because damage cannot be made good by replacing the goods.