By Lothar Severin & Sarah Peterlin

The great moment finally arrived in July 2009. After a planning phase of several months, the first bags were produced at Kerry-TALKE’s inaugural bagging plant in Shanghai, China. Never before had China seen a plant like this being operated by a chemical logistics company.

A high degree of teamwork was called for in the TALKE group to achieve such an outcome: planning for the plant was a joint venture undertaken by the technical department in Hürth, Logistic Solutions and, of course, the Kerry-TALKE team. Faissal Boujadayni, Project Manager Engineering & Construction at Logistic Solutions, was the on-site coordinator for the plant installation. The first machinery tests were carried out using polyethylene provided by our colleagues at S.A. TALKE in Saudi Arabia.

One particular challenge we faced was how to explain processes at the plant to the new Chinese employees, since the equipment and all operating instructions are produced in Europe and are not available in Chinese. We arranged for labels, instructions and procedures to be translated into Chinese to ease the job of our staff on the ground. In October 2009, the first of the customer’s containers arrived at the bagging plant.

To ensure the process ran smoothly, colleagues from TALKE-Hürth and S.A. TALKE travelled to China, with support from the Kerry-TALKE team. “Despite initial language barriers, all colleagues from Kerry-TALKE, S.A. TALKE and TALKE Hürth had an immediate understanding, which allowed us to perform well together in China” said Lothar Severin, Project Coordinator at Logistic Solutions, who spent several weeks in Shanghai for the startup.

The plant‘s main purpose is to import polymers in bulk from the Middle East, the USA and South-East Asia. The product arrives in containers and is then filled into 25kg bags at the bagging line. This allows the customer to decide at the last moment whether the product is to be sent to the end user in loose or packaged form. It also means that the efficient use of container space is maximised. The chemical industry has shown great interest in this concept so that we can expect the machinery to be already running at full capacity this year.