Nine rings with the width of one of the highway roads, over 200 t of cargo as long as 30 m and the route from Coesfeld in the North-Western Germany to Shanghai – that’s the task undertaken by the logistics operator Dachser. This unusual load was commissioned by the manufacturer of autoclaves, Scholz Maschinenbau company.
Autoclaves are hermetically sealed, heated tanks which are used to carry out chemical processes. The manufacturer of such devices, used, for example, for machining composites for connecting aircraft parts, is Scholz, a German company.
This time the autoclave was extremely large, had by far bigger dimensions compared to the standard ones. It was impossible to transport it in its entirety. The load weighing more than 200 t, with length of 30 m and a diameter of 6.8 m was therefore divided into nine sections which will be combined in the destination site in China.
Scholz factory is located in Cosfeld near Münster. The distance from there to the port is approx. 230 km.
Burdensome width
Length and weight of the autoclave was not the problem. The real challenge was the width of 6.8 m and the need to accommodate such a load on the road – explains Hans-Ulrich Brüggemann, sea freight projects manager in Dachser.
In the first place the route from the Coesfeld factory to the highway had to be analysed. They had to check whether there is any risk of the vehicles with risks getting stuck. The preparations took six weeks.
The transport, as usual, required appropriate permits. It was carried out only at night. After four days the load, escorted by the police, ended up in Wilhelmshaven port.
After being delivered to the container terminal in Wilhelmshaven (the only one in Germany with access to the highway where the 8-metre gate allows for fitting transported goods) it was loaded onto a ship. Twenty 40-foot flat rack containers were put next to one another. They were used for loading and attaching rings. A container platform with the maximum load of up to 110 t was used. After being placed on board of the MSC Hamburg ship (with capacity of 19 thousand TEU) the gigantic rings started their trip to Shanghai which will take over a month.