An unusual order: Anton Klein Industrieverpackungen + Logistik GmbH from Hennef, a member of the German Association for Wooden Packaging, Pallets and Export Packaging (HPE), recently packed a racing car for the world's toughest solar car race and shipped it to Australia.
The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge 2017 will travel around 3,000 kilometres on public roads from Darwin in the north to Adelaide on the south coast across the continent. „In addition to the racing car, which is made of high-quality composite materials and packed with customised electronics, technical accessories and personal luggage for more than 30 people also had to be prepared ready for shipping and ultimately brought to Australia by sea and air,“ says Anton Klein Managing Director Maria Klein-Schmidt.
The interesting packaging project started with an enquiry: „A group of young people from the RWTH Aachen University area, who had come together as a team to develop a solar vehicle, had decided to take part in the world's toughest race for solar vehicles in Australia. Well-known companies such as Huawei and Porsche were already on board, but a logistics company was still missing. We were very happy to step into the breach,“ says Klein-Schmidt.
Team Sonnenwagen
After an initial meeting in Aachen, it was quickly agreed that the young team of specialists, ‚Team Sonnenwagen‘, would be responsible for coordinating and handling the sensitive freight with accessories from all specialised areas of logistics. „This included, for example, highly sensitive lithium-polymer batteries, which had to be transported with Hazardous goods packaging protected and with a temperature-controlled refrigerated containers with temperature monitoring loggers were shipped by sea together with other accessories, luggage for the team members and the trailer for the racing car,“ adds project coordinator and sales manager Rolf Stockhausen.
Another important aspect of the project for the racing team was to transport the racing car as quickly and quickly as possible, which is why it was transported by air. „Our company has been inspected by the German Federal Air Freight Office and is certified for air freight. Thanks to our wealth of experience, ‚Team Sonnenwagen‘ was able to test the brand new vehicle in its home country right up until the last minute. It was only at the last minute that we sent the special vehicle to the starting point of the race in Darwin, Australia, in specially developed air freight packaging.“
The students responsible from Aachen were able to final packaging procedure The students were guests at our plant in Hennef for two days until the vehicle was finally sealed in the special packaging in order to obtain the final information for the takeover of the vehicle in Australia and to acquire the necessary technical expertise for the return transport of the vehicle to Germany,„ says Stockhausen.
