Pacemaker - Talke's tailor-made concept for the plastics specialist Styron sets standards for ‘clean room' loading and transport. Polycarbonate is an extremely versatile material. With a consumption of 2.2 million tons every year, the material accounts for only 1.3% of global volume of polymer production. Despite this, polycarbonate products are part of our everyday life.

Calibre-brand polycarbonate granulates are manufactured by the polymer, latex and rubber multinational Styron at its production facility in Stade, northern Germany. Calibre has an impressively high scratch, impact and heat resistance combined with exceptional clarity and among its applications it is used in the manufacture of digital, optical media such as CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

The Highest Standards of Quality and Durability

In line with the high requirements of the end products, the standards set for Calibre as a raw material and the logistics processes behind it are also very complex. Polycarbonate granulates used in the field of optical media are subject to strict quality and purity requirements.

The smallest particle of dust or too high a ph value in the transport container can adversely affect the properties of the polycarbonate and render it unusable. In developing transport and logistics concepts, it is essential to ensure the same level of protection from environmental contamination on road and rail as can elsewhere only be guaranteed in a closed-loop production cycle through to the end product.

Great Effort On Behalf Of The End Consumer

"The great effort we put into our production and logistics ultimately benefits the end consumer," asserts Jens Hariefeld, senior production leader, Polycarbonate at Styron in Stade. "As consumers we expect our favorite album still to play true even after some time and that the Blu-ray disc we have borrowed will not jump and jerk at the vital moment."

Styron is a young company. Until June 2010, Styron was part of the Dow Chemical Company. In the course of the spin-off, a large number of processes such as the transport and logistics concept for Calibre polycarbonate granulates were reviewed.

"We were looking for a way of optimizing our Calibre granulate transport based on the existing concept. We anticipated in particular that a revised concept using comparable equipment would result in a higher transport weight," said Hans-Heiner Neuhaus, Styron Deutschland Managing Director and Styron Global Business Manufacturing Director & Technology Center Leader Polycarbonate and Compounds & Blends. "So we were all the more surprised that we could immediately see when Talke presented its concept that it was based on significantly smaller transport containers."

Increased Transport Volume, Improved Protection

Once the developers at Talke were made aware of the specification, they quickly realized that the only way to achieve a satisfactory increase in transport volume was to come up with new, lighter equipment. They therefore developed a concept that went way beyond offering a pure transport solution.

Following an initial in-depth assessment of the loading technique, which was conventionally carried out through two manholes on the 40ft containers used, Talke's experts took a bold decision and without further ado redesigned all the loading technology at the Stade production facility. In future, loading was to be carried out through only one opening in a 30ft container.

"Compared with standard transport, ‘clean room' transport requires higher standards - and for this reason the concepts must be designed specifically for this segment. We knew that in order to ensure maximum protection for the product we had to eliminate as many contamination opportunities as possible, right from the outset," said Klaus Wessing, Talke's director of Transport Division & HSSEQ Services. "So, during the design stage we decided to give each container only one loading port and thus reduce the risk of contamination by 50% compared with the conventional process,"

So how were they to achieve an evenly distributed load with greater transport volume in a smaller container with only one loading port, when one considers that all the conventionally loaded containers in Stade were only capable hitherto of utilizing 70-75% of the space available?

The answer was to make use of the natural flowing properties of the product itself, which in the case of polycarbonate granulates behaves like fine gravel. In addition, the container to be loaded was tipped up using its own tipping mechanism mounted on the chassis. This effectively obviates the formation of conical piles, the small heaps of product which are formed during the loading of free flowing products.

In this way, using the technology developed by Talke, almost 90-95% of the volume of the container can be utilized while at the same time minimizing the risk of contamination.

Talke had the containers required for this purpose made by FFB in Lower Saxony and has leased them to Styron on a long-term basis. They are manufactured entirely out of highly abrasion-resistant stainless steel. During the design process, guaranteeing high purity standards was also of the highest priority. With the objective of avoiding any dust contamination within the container, even during the transport chain, particular attention was paid during the development process to the air filtration and the hermetic sealing of the container.

Focus on Sustainable Transport and Logistics Concepts

All vehicles employed by Styron throughout Europe are based at Rotenburg an der Wümme (Lower Saxony). This additional facility was opened by Talke to supplement the site at Stade and to provide additional capacity, thus enabling the logisticians to react rapidly and reliably to periods of peak demand and to serve other special transportation needs in the Oldenburg/Bremen area. Stand-by costs and journeys were reduced and did not need to be passed on to the customer. In total, this new concept enabled Talke to offer an increase in payload of around 12.5% while at the same time reducing CO₂ emissions.

Following the handover of the first containers in February, the transport services for Styron started at the beginning of March. Both partners, Styron and Talke, are convinced of the success of this development.

"We want to offer our customers innovative and sustainable solutions," Neuhaus said. "And this means that when choosing a service provider we do not take our decision solely on grounds of pricing, but look at the overall concept behind the price, taking into account their own development ideas."

Klaus Wessing: "We are delighted that we were successful in persuading Styron of the merits of our transport concept. In the context of our commitment to promoting sustainable transport and logistics, the development of concepts that combine increased efficiency with a significant reduction in our carbon footprint is one of the core tasks on which we intend to focus in the coming years."

"The transport concept developed by Talke represented the best opportunity for us to offer the market significantly enhanced performance while balancing environmental and economic considerations. It has clearly demonstrated that change is possible when strong partners such as Styron and Talke act in concert," added Jens Hariefeld.