The shiploader designed, engineered and installed by Bedeschi for Cargill is a complete preprocessing mobile unit rather than a conventional shiploader, featuring a double track drive over hopper, grains sampling, weighing and scalping able to load ships up to Panamax size at a capacity of 1000 t/h on grain and oilseeds. The system has been designed to fully meet Australian standards (from a structural and electrical point of view) and Cargill’s best practices rules. To comply with Cargill’s safety requirements for instance, instead of using the traditional bucket elevators, Bedeschi designed a special version of its chain elevator (normally applied to ship unloading) granting superior safety and dust tight operations. With this application of a known technology in a completely different scenario, we have also provided a solution to the very narrow quay available, that would have allowed for loading just small barges and concentrate in a single machine what would have required several individual equipment with great decrease of operational efficiency.

The Advent of the COVID-19 Pandemic during project execution, led to a full project review process.

This process consisted in a detailed reorganisation of all project phases, from those that were yet to be completed, to the final step of the shiploader commissioning in Australia.

All this has become possible thanks to the synergistic collaboration between Bedeschi and Cargill teams, who worked together in the development of the risk analysis and the mitigation plan. This collaboration and sharing experience, gave the possibility to progress with the project in an effective and efficient way, despite Italy, China and Australia were in a full lockdown.

An additional challenge added to the project, was the difficult visa obtaining procedures, due to the regulation changes caused by the Covid-19, and the travel logistics for the Bedeschi field engineers. Thanks to Bedeschi service team, our engineers managed to be present on the most crucial phases of the project, both in China and Australia. Their presence on ground and therefore their ability to promptly handle all the typical issues of these large projects has been a key factor for the success of the project itself.