From nails and screws to boats and huge wooden obstacles for the equestrian cross country course, the Rio 2016 organising committee will require approximately 30 million items to stage the Olympic and Paralympic Games – and somewhere to store it all. This is where the Main Distribution Centre comes in. Comprising two giant warehouses with a combined space of 72,000 square metres in the Duque de Caxias region, this will be the nerve centre of the Rio 2016 logistics operation. It will be supported by a second facility in Barra da Tijuca, the neighbourhood that will host Barra Olympic Park. This second centre, comprising 15,000 square metres, will store and distribute furniture for the nearby athletes’ village.

Around 980,000 of the items will be sports equipment, and Rio 2016 logistics director Fernando Cotrim said: “There are things that we are providing that I didn’t even know existed. For example, we will have to supply a special type of glue that is used by handball players so they can guarantee the best possible adhesion when they handle the ball.”

Video: the logistics of the Games (click on the cog symbol to select English subtitles)

Logistics operations will hit full speed in the period between three months before and three months after the Games, when about 1,500 workers will be action at the two centres. The organising committee plans to pay out about R$3 billion (US$759 million) in the acquisition of materials and contraction of services, said Cotrim.

Check out some of the numbers from the logistics of the Games:

The equipment will be transported using 170 lorries and 2,000 moving apparatus such as fork-lifts, tractors and cranes. In the Main Distribution Centre there will be 26,000 pallet positions, stacked seven-high, forming 200 corridors. While the equestrian cross country obstacles have provided the biggest challenges so far, Cotrim expects the boats for the sailing competitions at Marina da Glória to also present major tests, but guarantees that everything has been intricately planned.  

Another major challenge is customs clearance. Rio 2016 has been planning with the Federal Revenue department since 2011 and expects everything to run smoothly. “It involves 12 government entities, including the Federal Police, National Health Surveillance Agency, Federal Revenue and the Army,” Cotrim said. “We have finalised our manual, which was the fruit of four years’ work, and we expect to have the fewest possible issues.”