Building the tower of Basel

For two years now, the Swiss logistics and inland navigation company Ultra-Brag AG has been undergoing a rigorous renewal process as far as its building structures are concerned. By the end of 2009, the traditional Basel-based Rhine navigation, logistics, and warehousing company will have moved out of one of its present three storage and handling locations in the Rhine port of St. Johann.

Port makes way for the new Novartis campus
This largest construction and relocation project in the long history of Ultra-Brag was triggered by a large-scale project launched by the international pharmaceutical corporation Novartis: Novartis is building a “Campus of Knowledge, Innovation, and Community” on a large lot of land in the immediate vicinity of the St. Johann port. The urban development concept also makes provision for the wide opening and landscaping of the terrain down to the banks of the Rhine. The consequence: By the end of 2009 at the latest, Ultra-Brag AG as the sole operator of the St. Johann port had to clear its site on the left bank of the Rhine.

This forced Ultra-Brag AG to relocate its Rhine port with all of its bulk storage facilities, cranes, and berths to some other place. This was no easy undertaking considering the tight space conditions that already exist in the ports of the City of Basel. But working closely with the local authorities and Novartis, a solution was found which satisfies all the parties concerned: The construction of a new bulk storage elevator with a new ship unloading system in Harbor Basin II in Kleinhüningen in addition to a large new flat store in the Auhafen port of Muttenz. “The construction of these two new installations was an enormous challenge for us,” admits Beat Heydrich, the CEO of Ultra-Brag AG. He adds: “But the construction and relocation project also generated new impetus for us and provided us with numerous new, state-of-the-art, and efficient facilities. This gave us the opportunity to improve our processes and to enhance our efficiency.”

An 83-meter-tall tower
The new bulk storage terminal that Ultra-Brag AG operates in the Rhine port of Kleinhüningen is an impressive structure. With its overall height of 83 meters, it clearly dominates the Basel port skyline. This height required a number of special measures: The structure has to be earthquake-proof, it must be resilient enough to absorb wind loads, and its immense weight must be reliably supported by its relatively small footprint of 27 by 40 meters. The concrete structure, which was built by the slip-forming method in three stages, therefore stands on a large number of piles with a thickness of up to 1.2 meters and a length of 28 meters. The bulk storage section of the new Ultra-Brag landmark has a height of about 70 meters. It houses 32 round storage bins plus 15 interstice bins, which hold more than 40,000 cubic meters of material. Most of the Buhlersupplied equipment is installed in the headhouse of the elevator building, which is attached on the waterside to the block of bins and rises another four building levels beyond the bins. But the core systems of the entire installation are the two 87-meter-tall belt-and-bucket elevator legs which elevate the material from the ship or rail receiving sections to the top of the terminal.

Ultra-Brag AG has trusted the proven bulk storage and conveying technology of Buhler for decades. Therefore the company again entrusted the supply, installation supervision, and start-up of the complex materials handling and control systems for the new bulk storage facility to the grain handling specialists from Uzwil.

A special project
“With its height of 83 meters and its very small footprint of merely about 1,000 square meters, the new storage elevator tower of Ultra-Brag AG is a very special case,” explains Marco Ceresa, the Buhler man in charge of coordinating the project. “In addition, some of the storage bins are vertically split in order to increase the total number of bins. An active explosion protection system and explosion pressure relief through the bin ceilings are part of an overall ATEX explosion control concept.”

The bulk storage technology applied reflects the state of the art. Numerous chain conveyors and elevator legs move the bulk commodities from the ship unloading point to the storage bins. Special receiving and cleaning systems ensure proper cleaning of the grain prior to storage. The bulk material bins are exhausted through centralized as well as decentralized dust collection filters. Buhler also installed the equipment required for loading road and rail vehicles for onward transportation.

The fully automated materials handling systems in conjunction with the new, highly efficient “kangaroo crane” are capable of handling as much as 600 cubic meters of material per hour. This is five times the capacity of the old location.

Twin-level flat store
The second new building structure built for Ultra-Brag AG in the Auhafen port of Muttenz, a suburb of Basel, differs in many respects from the tall bulk storage terminal This twin-level flat storage facility with a footprint of 42 by 120 meters holds a total of 27,000 cubic meters of bulk animal feeds and of 6,600 cubic meters of fertilizer. The modified design supplied by Buhler – with chain conveyors installed above the flat store roof for introducing the material into the feed storage section instead of belt conveyors inside the building – increased the customer’s total storage capacity by more than 60 percent with given building dimensions. The formulated feeds and the fertilizers are stored and handled on two completely separated building levels. Flat stores are basically designed for the intermediate storage of such bulk materials because they are unsuitable for storage in conventional storage silos due to their special flow characteristics.

The top level of the flat store is reserved for animal feeds. Its 25 compartments are filled by separate roof-top conveying systems. Fertilizer is stored on the ground floor. The 16 compartments there – which are completely separated from the feed handling installations – are fed directly from the ship berthing point. As the new flat store is not located on the waterside, a high-capacity, dust-free conveying system had to be constructed from the grab crane to the new shed across the railroad tracks and the road.

According to Ultra-Brag, the proportion of animal feeds and derivates supplied in containers has continuously increased over the past few years. A niche market has emerged for container transportation of bulk materials on selected shipping routes and for special products. Even today, Buhler provides solutions for loading and unloading cereal grains, animal feeds, and derivatives into and from containers. New, modern installations are being increasingly equipped with this “container option.” This is an additional variant within the grain terminal beside the ship, rail, and road unloading and loading systems. But even if the significance of this materials transportation method is rising steadily, the total share of “container grain” ultimately remains fairly low. This is because of the volatile freight rates and the occasional lack of availability of free containers on such transport routes. Currently, the global share of grain shipped by container is said to amount to only about one or two percent. In the flat store of the Auhafen port, Buhler installed a container tipping platform with an integrated intake pit. This allows automatic discharge of containers using a programmable logic control system. The container crane installed at the customer’s site deposits the containers directly on the dumping platform. Discharge can start as soon as the container doors have been opened.

Not only for storing
Beside being used for storing bulk and bagged fertilizers, the ground level of the flat store also houses a processing system for blending and mixing different components plus two installations for bagging fertilizers in 50-kilogram bags and Big Bags. The fertilizers are always shipped in standard- size bags or Big Bags. Another bagging line packs animal feeds. As in the new building structure in Kleinhüningen, the technical equipment installed in the new Ultra-Brag flat store in the Auhafen port was also supplied by Buhler. Its grain handling specialists designed and installed all the materials handling systems in the feed storage section and in the weighing tower, as well as the feed intake equipment and the installations for loading road and rail vehicles. Buhler also configured and built the complex control system of the plant.

Construction of the new building structures for Ultra-Brag AG lasted from the start of construction in the spring of 2008 to commissioning in the autumn of 2009, a little less than one year and a half. This allowed the opening ceremony to be held at the end of October 2009.