The interview in English
Typically like many manufacturing industries our older plants are very labor intensive and even if the labor is low cost the output level is low per plant. You can only have so many people working in an area otherwise chaos. When we looked at our region, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Africa, Near East and Middle East with a 10 year vision we needed to be able to set up new plants requiring less people but also to be able to standardize technology for cross training and support. This required us to build some 24 individual plants on 20 sites, some of which were new sites. The plants were of 3 main groups, Powder Blending, Liquid Blending and Paste Blending. (The liquid blending did include some chemical reaction control on certain plants).
Investment:Of course payback is always a key element and has to be balanced with the cost of technology and running the plant. Typically, we would look for a payback in 4 - 5 years. In order to control the cost of new plant technology we needed to work with Turnkey suppliers, from design, construction, commissioning, training and hand over. In the past having many of these functions separated had created cost escalation and suppliers blame games. So, you need to find competent plant suppliers with a high level of design capability matched with a high level of technology ability and first rate installation teams who will work anywhere in the world. New technology often instils fear in operating companies so good training and support through the first few months is paramount to the success.
Challenges:Our chemistry was changing and we required more flexible plants that not only produce a diverse range of products but would allow a fast change over between products to reduce lost production availability. This was where it was critical to work with suppliers on design and equipment choice. We required a high level of self cleaning or clean in place. Where cleaning and inspection where required we need fast opening systems to inspect but these must be free of leaks. With some plants we needed a modular design so that if a market collapsed in a country for whatever reason we could easily relocate the plant or move it to a new location inside a country if the market place shifted. All our existing facilities were impossible to relocate due to cost created with the difficulty of dismantling. We also required robust reliable components as many sites are thousands of kilometres away from major centres so breakdowns from reliability could not be tolerated. Our liquid plants in Nigeria, Kenya and Russia are typical examples where we either have a country support issue on the technology or distant from our engineering support. In Nigeria we used the standard plant design with modifications to allow it to fit inside a building with a very low roof.
Many of our existing sites had difficult buildings but we still wanted the same technology we would put in a new building. This stretched the design teams many times. We had decided to standardise the plant designs to reduce design cost and ensure plant effectiveness, each plant could be improved in design but the starting point was clear. In old sites this presented many challenges but they had to be overcome to ensure our standard output expectations would be met.
It is always our aim to not only meet the requirements but where possible be ahead of them. In the plants we wished to have zero emissions. This requires careful choice of equipment, a very detailed review at every stage of the design and of course on operation checking and ensuring our goals had been met. Liquid plants had to fully recycle any wash waters, but design should minimize the need for cleaning. Emissions from extraction equipment went through radically different technology to not only clean the air stream but to allow for the waste removed to be fully recycled. In the powder plants design to minimize cleaning was also critical, dust extraction again to allow collection and reuse in the plant. New design and technology to safeguard against dust explosions was added after vigorous studies with suppliers involved. Weighing technology allowed the plants to work at a high output level consistently. Plant worker intervention was mainly to keep silos, hoppers fully loaded with product, here ergonomics and health and safety were paramount in the design, often far more stringent that the existing rules and regulations. Our powder plant in Saudi Arabia met all these criteria. High volume plant, low operative numbers and designed to run as clean as any food plant.
Our paste plants had to take our best technology of both liquid and powder plants where design was critical to ensure raw material automation created no negative problems for the storage and loading process. Dry component systems must stay dry including being free of vapors, a challenge for the design teams, at the heart of this was safety and removing the need for operatives to have to clean difficult or potentially dangerous areas of the plant. Our plant for making special grease provided a strong challenge to meet our design criteria, however we did it and are very proud of this high technology plant with very high emission control and fully automated material handling at our Russian plant.
We have always believed that we should be ahead of the regulations to safeguard our people and assets. This is not often a cost issue but a design or operating issue that can be introduced and, in many cases, added value and not costs. However, without the correct supplier with strong design capability, understanding and the technical know-how to convert our concepts into working designs and then to deliver a fully operational plant all of the above cannot easily be achieved. In Greece we found only one supplier Acmon Systems and across the region they were they only supplier that could meet all of our requirements and these were the primary reasons why they are our preferred partner for present and future projects.
