Industrial Packaging
January/February 2016
BULKDISTRIBUTOR
17
Wolf-Dieter Haberl,
A veteran of the big bag industry
back deliveries to get higher prices.
With today’s overproduction of crude oil
there should not be a shortage of plastic
resins.
A quick word with…
Wolf-Dieter Haberl,
Owner of Bulk Bag Tec
You have worked with bulk bags
from 1976 to 2015. What are the
main changes that you have seen
during that time?
We have been producing bulk bags in
Germany since 1975 in limited
quantities and from 1976 in Kaohsiung,
Taiwan in larger quantities. The main
difference nowadays with bulk bags is
that they are mainly of much lighter
fabric with lower length of webbing.
The factory in Kaohsiung used to make
so-called ‘woolpacks’ for Australia and
New Zealand, so they were used to
weave heavy HDPE-fabric (250 gr/sqm)
and used strong sewing machines and
heavy sewing yarn. There was no
production of webbing, which we had
to import from Europe. The bags were
shipped in large bales, not palletised as
it is done now.
There has been a lot of concern
among FIBC makers about the
shortage of raw materials. Have you
seen similar problems earlier in your
career and what do you think could
be done about this?
Regarding the shortage of PP raw
Est. 1990
materials,
we have never faced a serious
problem during my long career. Of
course prices go up and down,
sometimes dramatically, but shortages
happened only if local producers held
How did you end up working in bulk
bags? What was the industry like in
the 1970s?
My career in PP woven products started
actually on the machinery side. From
1970 to 1973 we lived in Portugal and I
was sales manager for circular looms for
PP woven sacks. At the Milan Plastics
Exhibition in 1972 we presented a large
6-shutte loom, without even knowing
what a bulk bag was. Our customers
used the fabric as groundsheets for
collecting olives, etc. These Portuguese
looms were then refined and altered
and built the basis of the famous
Starlinger ‘circular looms’. In the early
1970s I worked for a German sack
trading company and this was when I
had my first contact with bulk bags.
What has been the most important
technological breakthrough during
your time working in FIBCs?
I started my own production of big bags
in Austria in 1978 and there has of
course been constant development.
With the rather high wages in Central
Europe we had to work efficiently, first
by automated heat-cutting and holing
of the fabric. We developed efficient
and simple machines and got them built
in Turkey by a company which sold the
machines all over the world, even to
India and Mexico.
The other important feature was to
sew a bag quickly and safely, so we
used sturdy chain-stitch machines with
upper feed for the body and the
spouts, the belts were attached to the
four corners by overlock sewing
machines. This proved to be the most
economical bag in terms of speed of
production, cost of fabric, and the
strength and safety of the bag.
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Another important issue was the inhouse production of webbing. It was
much cheaper to weave our own
carrying belts, tie-tapes and filler cords.
This type of bag, which we developed
by end of the 1970s, was then adopted
in Turkey as well as almost all of Europe,
and today also in India and China.
A well-managed company could
produce a typical bulk bag with skirt or
spouts in 12–15 minutes (from fabric to
ready-packed bag). I think this simple,
but economic and safe, bag was a real
breakthrough.
Which people would you highlight
as having had the most impact on
your career?
In 40 years of the bulk bag business, of
course, I got to know a lot of people
who also helped guide me through
developments in the market. The most
important person, however, was my
wife, who joined our enterprise from
the start and acquired a very good
know-how in bulk bag making and
marketing.
I also want to mention Mr Pijpers from
Amoco (our first fabric supplier), Yilmaz
Bastug, who built most of our
machinery in Turkey, and Karl Schmitt,
our very knowledgeable plant manager.
There are a lot of companies out
there at the moment representing
different aspects of the FIBC
community. What more do you think
they could do to represent the
interests of bulk bag manufacturers?
There are so many manufacturing
companies now in Turkey, India, China
and Eastern Europe, which supply
directly to the end-user, competing with
each other and keeping prices down.
But the most important issue is to make
and maintain good quality, although
low prices are challenging. With one
bad delivery you can lose a good
customer for ever.
What plans do you have to relax in
your retirement?
For my retirement I still plan to be
around in big bag manufacturing,
maybe consulting. Otherwise, we plan
ship cruises to Alaska and Norway and
keeping up my hobby of astronomy, and
not forgetting my grand-children who
keep me busy, too.
www.bulkbagtec.at
New Clarcor baghouse
C
larcor Industrial Air has introduced the
UAS Modular Industrial Baghouse (MIB),
a series of dust collector products that
provide safe solutions for food, chemical,
bulk powder cement processing and other
common applications.
Unlike traditional baghouses, the company
says, the UAS MIB series was engineered from
the g