Filling in Venezuela
July 10th, 2006 | In Food&Pharma | 7752 commentsAuthor: Georg Senftl
After we already supplied several bottler for color, fruit masses and others to Venezuela, my local representative asked me to come one week to visit customers with him. Somewhat excited, because you can hear much about e.g. criminality, I arrived then at Caracas. I was very positively surprised by the friendliness of the people, all are much fancy and cleanly dressed, also poor people. Most regions of Venezuela’ s are very fruitful, thus an ideal basis for companies like Kraft or Heinz, in order to manufacture fruit mashes and such a thing. These are thereby a group of principal purposes if it is about the filling of viscous products. Criminality becomes noticeable only at the edge, then many companies or gas stations with armed personnel are secured. We could not visit a customer also because of ‚local’ unrests. I didn`t look aout for chaotic traffic, here you can see many age-old US cars (with gasoline prices of 4 cent per litre really plays consumption no role), main thing is the car works. Functioning light or tire with profile here really interests nobody, and with darkness red traffic lights are only one recommendation, which leads to the fact that you drive very carefully when the light is green!
But now to the filling and a short description of some customers. The first customer manufactures chewing tobacco, ugly things, the basis in addition is strongly thickened, cooked tobacco leaves. That looks then partly like chewed chewing rubber, is however pumpable with our technology well. Finally a continuous strand is to be manufactured. I see no problem here technical, something similar ViscoTec has repeatedly made. However there still so many other processes which must be changed over by hand filling to ‚automatic mode’, which will last. Another customer manufactures cooling gel for air conditioning systems in cars and uses for two years our below-surface-filling system. The plant worked two years well, but then there was „a problem with the control’. When I came, large astonishment: there was still our control cabinet there, but the interior life was completely different. Venezuelans have a large improvisation talent, which simplifies many things and finally also leads to an useful solution. Here however it didn`t worked, therefor our control engineering is probably too complicated. I could not do then also much, however at least I could get a live feeling, which temperatures around the 30°C and an air humidity of over 95% demand from the people and also the technology. It was more positive at the next customer, who has already some fillers for emulsion paint of us. At a station the relatively high-viscosity emulsion paint (Venezuelans paint its houses very multicolored) is filled up in 20-litre buckets, 18 buckets per minute with a filler. We did not build a filler in this size ever, and supplied then Venezuela also right after. The filler ran however great, they even dind´t need from us a start-up. That makes one happy enormously.
We visited then also some large international customers in the Food section, among other things the company Heinz. When I wanted to present our barrel emptying systems, with which we pump fruit masses, tomato mark or other very viscous things from barrels, short declining: ‚we already know’. I was a little bit surprised, until it turned out that the plant manager was three years before with Heinz in China and there was a barrel emptying system of Viscotec in use. It also concerned here dosing fruit masses out of 200-liter-barrels into a mixing tank, however the quantities are very different from 5 to 200 kg, that with five different fruit pastes. Technically no problem, however already, if one sees the costs of an elegant technical solution with the very low labour costs of the manual present handling. I was generally welcomed everywhere with open arms, since there are probably not so many companies, which are well fimiliar with filling or dosing. Even if much still is made by hand, nevertheless also much is strongly automated. Thus there are breweries in a size e.g. here, how you can not find here in completely Germany. However, as advisor or a salesman you are overextended very easily, because the customers do not only want to get a solution of filling, but dearest the whole process. If the business develops well, I come gladly again into this beautiful country, not least also because of the many exceptionally beautiful women. Until soon, yours George Senftl
