Scania Australia and polystyrene product manufacturer, Polyfoam, have formed a powerful partnership for the transport of lightweight packaging that can withstand high winds.
Founded in 1985, Polyfoam is owned and run by Bruce and Simon Pickett and manufactures food boxes for fresh produce and for ready-made weight-loss meals.
It operates plants in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia, as well as two factories in Tasmania supporting the local salmon export industry.
About five years ago, Polyfoam’s Bruce Pickett and its General Manager, Nick Tandy, engaged Scania to supply rigid trucks to transport the expanded polystyrene food boxes after Polyfoam’s previous Japanese supplier had ceased to offer a suitable vehicle.
“Our product is so light, that even a fully loaded 14-pallet rigid or 24 pallet drop-deck semi-trailer would not add even a tonne to the total mass of the combination,” Nick says.
“But at 4.3 m tall and around 9 m long the curtainsider becomes a huge sail in a side wind, especially when traversing Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge.
“What we needed was a lightweight truck that could be stable on the road when it’s loaded and unloaded, because we often have no backload.”
While the company began with one Scania P 280 rigid, subsequent rigids advanced to P 320 specifications with single axle pig trailers attached to the rear to maximise the volume of product delivered per journey.
Subsequently, two G 450 prime movers were added, together with the Vawdrey curtainsiders for larger deliveries when access is not a problem.
“From the start everybody loved the Scania; the cabin layout, the access, the simplicity of the vehicle to operate. And it was great to drive,” explains Bruce Pickett.
“We now have three rigids and two prime movers in Victoria, one prime mover Scania in Bridgewater in Tasmania, one rigid in Westbury in Tasmania at the new factory. In Queensland I’ve got six rigids in service and two more on order.
“We’re also introducing Scania to our NSW operation with two going in there, and there will be a new prime mover for Westbury as well.”
“From our base in Dandenong South we deliver all over Victoria, from Portland to Bairnsdale and up to Shepparton. We tend not to go interstate, as we have factories in most states, so it is all intrastate running,” Nick says.
“The Victorian trucks will clock up on average 100,000 km annually, though in Queensland we have been up around 200,000 km per year, due to the longer distances.
“We’re pleased to see that the Scanias are returning better fuel efficiency than our older trucks, even though the payload is so light.
“It all adds up to savings we can bank. We’ll probably turn these over at a million km, but they will have had a relatively easy life, of course, although the rigids do deliveries to farms and also to building sites, so they’re often on poor roads and dirt.
Nick said having the Scania trucks on contracted repair and maintenance programs, the company clearly knows what the monthly servicing costs will be.
“It’s one predictable element in a business where other costs are less predictable, such as the raw materials for the foam products, which are tiny plastic granules,” Nick says.
“As a business we’re constantly looking for efficiencies, just like Scania. We try all sorts of ways to shave a few grams or fractions of a gram of base stock out of the design, and we have updated European machinery that can now mould multiple boxes at a time rather than just one.
Nick Tandy explained that, despite them being foam boxes, the materials have to be strong to cope with loads that can be 25 kg when full with salmon and ice and which are stacked 10 boxes high.
“This is important for our customers, as they need to get the most amount of product in the smallest space to keen their export transport costs to a minimum,” Nick says.
Nick Tandy also explained that the polystyrene foam boxes are fully recyclable.
“We take in up to nine tonnes a week and grind it up back into tiny pellets to be reused, with some virgin stock, and we make the recycled material into polystyrene pallets on which we place our product for transport, or waffle pods for construction,” Nick says.
“We say that our polystyrene product is more economical to recycle than cardboard, because polystyrene products come back, are ground up and are then ready to reuse.”
Polyfoam Australia Pty Ltd is 100 per cent Australian owned, with its core business being the manufacture of expanded polystyrene packaging for produce, seafood, medical, food and transport industries and many specialty packaging and insulating products.
Read about what Scania trucks are doing on the international scene.
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