Industrial packaging and securing cargo for transport is one of the most essential areas of logistics, on which the safety of transport and the successful execution of an order depend. A special task is the preparation for the relocation of large machines, the transport of valuable works of art or equipment to be sent into space. The Polish company Relopack is experienced in such diverse and complex tasks.
Industrial packaging is a demanding field that involves responsibility for entrusted equipment, machinery and a wide variety of loads, often of very high value. Each such assignment requires individual planning and preparation. However, some of the tasks are particularly complex and involve enormous responsibility. This is especially true for oversized equipment and items or the relocation of large industrial plants, where the challenge is the scale of the packing process, sometimes involving hundreds of machines.
"In the history of any company's existence, there are two types of work they do: standard, everyday assignments, those from which the company makes its living - this is the first type. The second type of projects are those that are out of the ordinary in terms of scale or exceptional in terms of their non-standard nature. In our industry, quite often there is an order which, for various reasons, becomes exceptional and becomes memorable for many years,' says Marcin Królski, member of the management board of Relativity. - says Marcin Królski, board member of Relopack.
Relopack carried out non-standard assignments that required a great deal of creativity and commitment. One of the first assignments it received was to build a total of more than 2,000 square metres of timber crates and to protect the massive installation that was part of a turbine for a hydroelectric power station. The largest of these had a volume of almost 400 cubic metres and this meant that it had an area almost as large as the production hall the company had at the time. For this reason, and due to the dimensional possibilities of road transport, it was decided to produce the boxes in pieces, and the assembly and construction of the whole took place at the customer's site.
"The realisation of this service taught us a great deal. Today, similar realisations are carried out by Relopack with much more freedom due to its larger production facilities and acquired know-how. The packing crate built at that time is still one of the largest crates Relopack has built in its history," comments Marcin Królski.
Packing a big factory
Another major project in which Relopack was involved was the packing and securing of a huge fleet of machinery from Europe's largest photovoltaic panel factory to a new location in the Middle East. The scale of this order is evidenced by the fact that the production hall of this plant was 60,000 sq m in size and housed hundreds of, fully automated, machines weighing several to several tonnes. Most of this equipment required the design and construction of specialised packaging. In total, for this one order, Relopack designed more than 90 types of boxes.
