Super Sacks superbly timed

Panalpina has recently helped Cabot Corporation, a leading global performance materials and specialty chemicals company based in the USA, to deliver around 260 tons of carbon black from its production facility in Italy to the end customer’s tire-manufacturing plant in Thailand within eight days.

Carbon black is a fine black powder used as a reinforcing in tires to improve tensile and abrasion strength. Without it, the consignee, a global tire manufacturer supplying several Asian countries, could have seen production halted.

Cabot has been an Ocean Freight customer of Panalpina for years, but for this urgent assignment Panalpina teams in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, and Thailand put in a tireless effort and worked hand in hand to get the cargo off the ground and to the plant as quickly as possible. Considering the volume and delivery deadline of less than two weeks, Panalpina drew on the capabilities of its overland departments and Charter Network to ensure a successful on-time delivery by air.

The carbon black was transported as small marble-sized balls in two-meter-high flexible containers known as Super Sacks^®. Panalpina handled the trucking of these sacks on a total of 18 trucks from Northern Italy to Frankfurt Airport. The overland journey through the Austrian Alps in average took less than 24 hours. Traveling separately over several days, each truck carried up to 20 pallets with 850 kg of carbon black per pallet. Trucking was organized in a way that the cargo arrived on time and without incurring storage fees at Frankfurt. Immediately upon arrival, Panalpina’s Frankfurt gateway team supervised cargo build-up and aircraft loading. As the entire cargo was over two meters in height, the majority had to be flown to Bangkok International Airport on the main deck of two chartered Boeing 747-400 freighters.