Panalpina has helped Cabot Corporation – a US materials and specialty chemicals company – to deliver 260 tonnes of carbon black from its production facility in Italy to the end customer’s tire-manufacturing plant in Thailand within four 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.
Panalpina teams in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, and Thailand worked hand-in-hand to get the cargo off the ground and to the plant.
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 20 trucks from Northern Italy to Frankfurt Airport. Each truck carried 20 pallets with 850 kg of carbon black per pallet.
As the entire cargo was over two metres in height, the majority had to be flown to Bangkok International Airport on the main deck of two chartered Boeing 747-400 Freighters.
