Arrival of waste paper: how delivery to the PKV works
Up to 5,000 tons of waste paper arrive at PKV every day. The Raw Materials Logistics department is responsible for receiving and storing the various types of waste paper at the waste paper yard and the two external warehouses.
Trucks loaded with huge bales of waste paper cross the PKV’s waste paper and storage areas and head for various unloading bays. In between, electric forklift trucks with brown, gray or white bales of waste paper drive back and forth, unloading trucks at various points or stopping to unload individual bales at the huge conveyor belt that leads up to the production halls.
From the outside, PKV’s waste paper yard appears confusing and in constant motion. But Tobias Backer, Intralogistics Assistant, explains that everything is strictly organized and precisely planned: “The workers here are highly concentrated and quickly store the newly received waste paper. Our processes are coordinated via computer-controlled programs so that we can check the quantities and qualities of the unloaded raw materials at any time.”
Delivery and unloading
Every day, an average of 160-200 trucks arrive at the waste paper site with the purchased quantities of waste paper. After the arriving trucks have registered at the PKV gatehouse with a delivery number, which already provides information about the type and quality of their waste paper load, they drive over a huge scale. A color-coded guidance system then helps the truck drivers to find their respective unloading point. Once a truck has arrived at its assigned location, it is unloaded using an electric forklift truck. “The logistics employee responsible carries out an incoming goods inspection and directly checks the quality of the delivered raw material,” adds Tobias Backer. This is important because each PKV cardboard or corrugated base paper grade uses certain types of waste paper. The raw material must correspond to the respective composition and also be stored in the right place so that the various production areas at PKV can access their “material”. The so-called belt feeders in production use forklifts to fetch the required grade from the storage sectors of the waste paper yard.
Quality control and storage
Before a bale of waste paper enters production, however, further quality checks are carried out during the truck unloading process. In addition to the visual inspection of each delivery, there is an annual quantity of random samples that are determined by a computer-controlled grid.The unloading personnel take these samples and the PKV laboratories test them directly. Incidentally, to avoid unnecessary empty runs, the unloaded trucks often drive to the intralogistics shipping department for new goods and are loaded again.
In normal operation, a bale of waste paper does not remain in the respective waste paper warehouse for more than 60 days.“The majority of bulk grades are handled, i.e. processed, within 30 days,” adds Tobias Backer. The team in the raw materials logistics department now consists of twelve employees who help keep the PKV raw materials cycle going.