A factory of collagen protein was transported from the Chinese province of Cangan 19 km away to Sioux City in the USA.
Transporting the whole production facility from one continent to another is a serious challenge. However, it turns out that such actions are increasingly frequent. Recently we wrote about the intra-European heavy duty transport of the production line components of the chipboard factory located in Spain to a new place in Bulgaria.This time the factory was transported from Asia to North America.
The project was carried out by Dachser, the logistics operator, which in cooperation with the company Gelita transported the company owned by Gelita from Asia to North America. The factory is the dismantled factory of collagen protein.
So far it has been located in the Chinese province of Cangnan and the destination was about 19 000 km away in Sioux City in the United States. The largest, indivisible components had more than 5 m in height and 3.5 m in width and some of them weigh up to 25 tonnes.
Road works almost blocked the factory transport from China
The hardest part of the task was the first section of the route, the road transport from Cangnan to the port in Wenzhou, 70 km away. During the standard procedure of detailed checking possible routes, it turned out that there is a risk of getting stuck in the „blind spot”, as there was no road which would allow transport of the load with a height of over 5 m. Therefore, after consultation with the client, it was decided that for the time of road transport in China the largest machine parts must be placed on the side.
This solution allow for reducing the height by 1.5 m, which is exactly enough to fit in the maximum limit. After the route was confirmed by the authorities, transport to the port in Wenzhou seemed easy. However, at the very beginning of the trip planned for three nights, an unexpected problem came out – the transport was blocked by the road works.
– We were completely surprised when we found out about the road works. Luckily, we succeed to solve that problem. However, this confirms than no matter how carefully you plan and prepare for such big projects, you can’t prevent all the unexpected events – Hans-Ulrich Brüggemann, the manager sea freight projects in Dachser Air & Sea Logistics w Cologne commented.
In this case the cause of the problem was lack of communication between local authorities. Although the route was officially agreed and confirmed, in fact it was not open. In this situation the most important step was to find an efficient solution quickly, it was necessary to carve the road to the construction site with bulldozers.
Then the trip was carried on according to the plane: huge cargo was transported by the offshore vessel from the port in Wenzhou 300 km to Shanghai. Then it passed over 18 000 km across the Pacific, the Panama Canal and the Caribbean to New Orleans. From there it was transported 1200 km by the network of waterways of the Mississippi River and the Missouri River, reaching the end point in Sioux City. The last 10 km was transport by cars to the factory of Gelita.
Photo: Dachser