“Swiftly to destinations worldwide.”
One in four of the world’s beverage bottles are manufactured or filled using machinery from Krones. The Bavaria based company relies on td.Flash for the fast global transportation of the components and spare parts required for its equipment.
Bottles rush loudly and at full speed along the conveyor belts. Labels are attached one after the other in rapid succession.
The machines from Krones manage up to 80,000 bottles an hour – in Tibet at an altitude of 5,000 meters, in Mongolia, in the USA or during the World Cup in Brazil.
But when this high-precision process is brought to a standstill by an error message and no more beer bottles or soft drinks are able to leave to plant, that’s when the phone rings in Neutraubling, southeast of Regensburg. The facility in the Upper Palatinate is the headquarters of Krones AG. In addition to complete machines, the plant manufactures spare parts and retrofits, which keep the Krones machinery going at all times at beverages companies all over the world.
So it’s important that we invest in new freighters such as the Boeing 777F in order to be able to transport higher volumes,” says Karin Prasch, Krones’ contact person and Head of Sales, Nuremberg at Lufthansa Cargo. “In addition, our special td.Flash operation teams take care of express shipments in the transit zone,” she adds. “Of course, we also exchange ideas with our product developers on how to organize solutions such as td.Flash even more efficiently,” Prasch explains.
Apart from the capacity guarantee, Krones also benefits from the td.Flash policy of accepting shipments up until 90 minutes before scheduled take-off: “This gives us a little more time to produce the part required and to hand it over to the airline or to the forwarder on the same day,” says Raab. Being able to pick up the shipment just two hours after landing also accelerates the processes on the destination side.
Yet even the best express solution is worthless if the aircraft do not land where the material is required: “We have tested other airlines’ express services, but Lufthansa Cargo’s close-meshed destination network has proven to be the best for us,” says Raab. Krones’ six other Life Cycle Service (LCS) Centers alongside the one in Neutraubling are located in Brazil, the USA, China, South Africa, Thailand and Russia. The five main destinations over which the machinery manufacturer ships most of its cargo are Chicago, São Paulo, Bangkok and Lagos from Munich, and Shanghai from Frankfurt.
Even though it can never be predicted with absolute certainty in the special machinery manufacturing segment where the next shipment will be going, there are identifiable cycles in the global beverages industry: “The demand of our key-account customers very much depends on mega-trends such as economic growth and on mega-events such as the World Cup in Brazil or the Olympics. Let’s see what comes up next,” says Raab, looking ahead optimistically.
For no matter what challenges await Krones in future, the reliable express solution via td.Flash and Lufthansa Cargo is ready to handle it with perfection.
