Imperial 2/2001_englisch - Panopa

not only requires extensive
storage and handling space,
but above all considerable
know-how. „Experience is
an important factor in our
business,“ says Battistiol. As
a professional forwarding
agent, he has a lot of it. Battistiol
has been working with
alloys for nearly three
decades and can determine
the origin of the material and
the areas of industrial use on
the basis of its grain size and
colour alone. More than 50
different additives as well as
a number of minerals make
up dbt’s main business.
Around 100 different grain
sizes are constantly stored in
dbt’s facilities.
Storage is carried out in
lots. For this reason the
sheds are divided into compartments.
The compartment
sizes are variable. „We can
store lots of 100 tonnes as
well as 4,000-tonne lots separately,“
adds Battistiol. He
specifies the daily cargo
handling capacity from vessel
to store or truck as approximately
5,000 tonnes.
dbt can store a total of
around 130,000 tonnes in all
its sheds. This makes the
company, in its own view,
number one in Europe in this
market segment.
Handling and processing
of alloys require care and
know-how as well as special
equipment. Thus, dbt has
crushing, grinding, screening
and sorting facilities and
can also dry the materials if
necessary and requested. As
a rule, the additives are delivered
free to the industrial
customers. Transport from
the store in the outer harbour
to the production plant
therefore also falls within
the scope of responsibility of
Duisburg Bulk Terminal
GmbH, which maintains a
substantial truck fleet.
While primarily motor
coasters deliver the materials
from Scandinavia directly to
the dbt quay, alloys and minerals
from overseas are
transported to Europe via the
ARA ports (Antwerp/Rotterdam/Amsterdam).
There the
bulk goods are taken over by
inland waterway vessels.
Kazhachstan, in turn, is
linked to ports in the Baltic
states via rail. From there the
alloys are brought to Duisburg
Bulk Terminal GmbH
at the outer harbour in Duisburg
via Rotterdam.
Speciality is material
treatment
Technically luva
Lagerungs- und Verpackungs-GmbH,
also located in
Duisburg, is even better
geared to special customer
demands. Here again ferroalloys
and minerals are handled
and stored in close cooperation
with dbt. Complementing
dbt’s facilities, it
provides another 40,000
square metres of space.
However, luva’s speciality is
material treatment.
With its extensive technical
equipment luva can
crush, screen, dry and pack
the extremely difficult-toprocess
materials (such as
ferrochromium) to diameters
down to 0.1 millimetre. By
means of, in some cases,
fully automatic and computer-controlled
processes
using conveyor belts, the
material is crushed, screened
and packed in big bags con-
taining up to 1.5 tonnes or in
paper sacks for 10 to 15
kilos. Open customs warehouses
round off the range
of services offered to customers
by luva as well as
dbt.
The most important customers
for dbt are the Krupp
Thyssen stainless steel
plants in Bochum, Krefeld
neska
dbt Managing Director Mario Battistiol: „We ensure a
continuous supply of ferroalloys and other products to
stainless steel producers.“
and Siegen. „Around 60 percent
of the materials go to
these plants,“ says neska
Managing Director Heinz
Bartels. The remaining 40
percent are exported in part
and supplied to other plants.
The relations between dbt
and the Krupp Thyssen
stainless steel production
plants have been embedded
At this approximately one kilometer long quay in the outer harbour Duisburg Bulk Terminal
GmbH (dbt) provides sufficient space for several inland waterway and coastal vessels.
IMPERIAL NEWS � 11