Case Study
Industrial Chemicals
Bulk material handling engineered for the demands of chemical manufacturing
Chemical processors move some of the most unforgiving materials in industry — powders that agglomerate in transit, dusts that pose combustion risk, resins and acids that damage conveying equipment not built for them. Flexicon designs bulk bag handling, flexible screw conveying, and pneumatic conveying systems that keep these materials moving safely, accurately, and without the contamination or downtime that comes from equipment mismatched to the job.
For South African and African chemical manufacturers — many operating hazardous-area sites, tight batching tolerances, and increasingly strict environmental and worker-safety standards — locally supported bulk handling equipment isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between a controlled process and a costly one.
A South African or broader African case study specific to Industrial Chemicals was not available on flexicon.com at the time of writing. The featured case study below is the most relevant global example, selected for its direct relevance to South African chemical processors handling hygroscopic, agglomerating powders in bulk bags.
Featured Case Study
DSM Coating Resins Spain — De-lumping polyester resin ingredients on the production line
The Challenge
DSM Coating Resins Spain S.L., based near Barcelona, is the world’s largest producer of polyester resins and one of the largest producers of specialty emulsions, supplying protective coatings used on bridges, ships, and automobiles. Manufacturing these resins depends on a steady supply of dicarboxylic acid and diol powders, delivered to the plant in bulk bags.
Both raw materials are prone to agglomeration — clumping together during shipping and storage until they no longer flow out of the bag on their own. DSM’s workaround was entirely manual: operators emptied each bag onto a grate inside a caged area and broke the lumps apart by hand. It was slow, messy, and carried a real risk of injury, and it created a bottleneck every time a fresh batch of raw material arrived.
Flexicon’s Solution
Flexicon installed a BLOCK-BUSTER® hydraulic bulk bag conditioner to automate the de-lumping process. Once a forklift loads a bulk bag onto the unit’s platform and the operator closes the interlocked safety doors, the system runs through a programmed cycle: the bag is raised hydraulically, contoured end plates press in from opposite sides to break down the agglomerated material, and the bag rotates 90° so every face gets conditioned evenly. The cycle can be set to repeat automatically until the contents are free-flowing and ready to discharge through the bag’s spout.
The Outcome
The manual crushing step — and the delays, mess, and safety exposure that came with it — was eliminated. Material now moves from delivery to production-ready in a single automated cycle, with operators fully protected behind the unit’s safety enclosure throughout. For a business built on consistent, high-volume resin output, removing that manual bottleneck from the front of the line was a meaningful operational win.
Additional Case Studies
Morgan Advanced Materials & Technology Ltd (Swansea, UK)
A bulk bag conditioner loosens solidified pitch imported from South East Asia ten times faster than the manual methods it replaced.
Nexeon Ltd. (Oxfordshire, UK)
A dilute-phase pneumatic conveying system safely transfers combustible silicon powder into slurry tanks for next-generation lithium-ion battery anode production.
Holland Dyes and Chemicals Ltd (Huddersfield, UK)
A fully enclosed conveying and batch metering system automates raw material dosing for a UK chemical dye manufacturer, meeting intrinsically safe standards for hazardous-area operation.
Willert Home Products (St Louis, USA)
Automated bulk bag discharging and precision flexible screw conveying cut batching time by 20% and improved accuracy to within 0.01% in toilet bowl deodoriser manufacturing.
Nye Lubricants, Inc. (Massachusetts, USA)
An enclosed mobile bag dump station eliminates airborne dust when introducing feather-light fumed silica into synthetic grease production.