Global Focus – January/February 2009

Très grand, très froid!
Canadian frozen food giant McCain has partnered with Dutch logistics service provider Kloosterboer and German materials handling vendor Westfalia to create the biggest cold storage facility in France.

Located in the northern French municipality of Harnes, the building will include an 11,200sqm (120,555sqf) warehouse standing 38 metres high. When complete, it will have 68,000 pallet places.

The facility will be used to automatically handle frozen food like french fries. To do this, it will be stocked with new automated equipment, including Westfalia’s high-density automated storage and retrieval system, automated unloading system and Savanna.NET warehouse management system. It will also be outfitted with automated roll chain conveyors and nine overhead cranes.

The facility—which is expected to cost McCain about $66 million—will replace eight regional cold storage warehouses in the area. Once construction is complete in early 2010, Kloosterboer will take over day-to-day operations.

Polar delivery
Ocean carrier and logistics provider FESCO recently made a series of special deliveries to some of the coldest and most isolated locations on earth.

The company’s Vasily Golovnin container ship unloaded supply cargo, fuel and equipment to several Argentine polar stations in the Antarctic. The vessel departed from Buenos Aires on December 31 and arrived at the General Belgrano II station behind an icebreaker on January 20. The ice conditions were poor—at times up to 1.5 metres deep—and the icebreaker had to stop a number of times to break a channel for the vessel. Both ships moved at speeds varying between two and five knots.

Once the vessel arrived at General Belgrano II, two KA-32 helicopters delivered the cargo to shore. The vessel stopped at five other Argentine polar stations on the expedition.

This is the second such supply expedition completed by the Vasily Golovnin. The first took place last year.

Transformers to Iraq
Indian freight forwarder Sahil Freight Express recently moved two 105-tonne transformers to Iraq on behalf of EMCO Ltd, a manufacturer based in India.

Each transformer measured 6.8m long, 4.3m wide and 3.1m high. They were transported 30 kilometres by road to the Port of Mumbai and shipped to Umm Qaser in southern Iraq. Sahil Freight is a member of Project Professionals Group (PPG), an international network of logistics companies. It worked with fellow PPG member Seven Seas Shipping and Transport Company of Jordan to ensure safe Customs clearance and delivery to the project site in Iraq.