Huge machine heading from Gloucester to Peru

By Gail McCarthy
Staff writer

Tue, May 13 2008

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When Battenfeld Gloucester Engineering landed a contract with a South American company last year to make a huge piece of plastics manufacturing equipment, among the things that had to be considered was whether the A. Piatt Andrew Bridge could handle the weight of the completed machine.

One of its components, roughly 10 feet in diameter and weighing 85,000 pounds, had to be made at a facility "over the bridge" in Westminster because the Route 128 bridge over the Annisquam River can support up to only 80,000 pounds.

Tomorrow, if the weather cooperates, the machine, six months in the making, will begin moving from the Blackburn Industrial Park company to its new home about an hour east of Lima, Peru, where it will be used to manufacture plastics.

Transportation of these oversized crates requires special permits and police escorts all the way to Newark, N.J., where they will be loaded onto an ocean-going container ship that will carry them through the Panama Canal before arriving in Peru.

A convoy will transport the equipment right through Lima, the capital city. The final stop is about an hour east of Lima, where the components will be assembled in a building specially built to house the equipment. Once completed, one piece will be about 100 feet tall, roughly 81/2 stories high.

The transportation, which will cost nearly $400,000, was a logistical challenge for the company.

Amanda Oelschlegel, the logistics manager, said she had to think "outside the box" to make this trip happen. It was made even more complicated by the weak U.S. dollar that has left U.S. ports congested with products for shipping abroad.

Oelschlegel said she'd looked into renting a barge to transport the crates from Gloucester to New Jersey, but there were concerns that the pieces were still too heavy for the local piers.

Gloucester Engineering found its moving solution working with its long-term partner Bruning International, an international freight company out of Holbrook.

The equipment was purchased by Polytex, a Chilean plastics manufacturing company that's opening a subsidiary in Peru. While they wouldn't give an exact price, company officials acknowledged the cost was a "few million dollars."

"This is pretty unique equipment. This is one of the widest winders in the world for this application," said German Laverde, a mechanical and plastics engineer. "We are the leaders in this market."

Gloucester Engineering produces equipment that is used to manufacture plastic products for industrial and packaging applications.

A 32-ton crane is needed to lift most of the crates, and a 50-ton crane is needed to remove the heaviest crates, and Oelschlegel said it will take about six hours to load the crates onto trucks at Gloucester Engineering. There's only one door in the shop large enough to pass the largest crates can pass.

The shipment will include three out-of-gauge crates — cargo too large to fit standard shipping containers — from Gloucester and three from the subcontractor at Westminster. They'll meet at the docks in New Jersey.

The entire Gloucester Engineering shipment will fill 16 standard 40-foot shipping containers and the six out-of-gauge crates, a total of 130 boxes.

The three oversize crates leaving Gloucester are described as "the widest, the tallest and the most unbalanced."

The most unbalanced is the one holding a component called an extruder. It's so big that the 17,000-pound gear box had to be removed for shipping, leaving it at a weight of 55,000 pounds. The tallest is about 11 feet high and weighs about 36,000 pounds. The widest is about 11 feet wide, also weighing about 36,000 pounds.

The trip tomorrow must be made during the day with clear weather, according to the permit guidelines. Massachusetts State Police will escort the equipment to the state line, at which time the Connecticut state police will take up the escort.

The equipment will be 27 days in transit from New Jersey on April 8 to its destination of Callao, Peru, on May 5.

The Peruvian container port, however, has no crane. In fact, there is only one crane in Peru that could lift the crates, so Oelschlegel found a vessel that has a large enough crane to unload the crates.

Although this is business as usual for Gloucester Engineering, this particular contract was larger than most.

In fact, Laverde said it is the largest in terms of the width of the equipment.

Company officials are looking forward to a prosperous future.

"This little bitty place here in Gloucester is a global company," said Carl Johnson, CEO and president.

Chairman John Sharood said now more than 50 percent of its business is from outside the country.

"Most of what we do gets sold overseas," he said. "When the company started in 1961, all its customers were from the United States. Now more than half the business comes from outside the country."

International orders so far this year come from the Ukraine, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Malaysia, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

"This is a long-term growth market because of the global demand for food packaging, and the other half of our sales is for industrial packaging," said Sharood. "It's also a high-tech product, so it's not so easily copied."

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