In the past six months, we have witnessed an explosion of interest in Flexitanks. Nowadays most companies prefer to rely on cutting-edge technologies and can gain real benefits of using flexitanks.

It is no wonder that mounting interest to this innovative packaging solution has brought new players to this market.

Tatiana Golovina, founder of Environmental Packaging Technologies Inc. has spoken about the recent developments in the market and the overt benefits of using high quality flexitanks.

Tatiana Golovina

“Most companies are taking chances of cargo loss and clean-up responsibility in pursuit of low priced Flexitanks”.

“Transport:”  How can we compete with low priced Chinese flexitanks?

In the very beginning EKOPACKTECH, official representative of Environmental Packaging Technologies Inc., in Russia made a decision to produce the most reliable high quality flexitank at a competitive price. Fortune 500 organizations in the industrialized countries have long ago grasped the simple truth that a cheapskate pays twice. The low price of a Chinese-made flexitank results from inexpensive and often marginal materials. Low quality and low priced flexitanks entails certain risk; the companies lose their cargo and in some cases have to pay fines for product leakage. A couple of years ago a major shipping line was charged at 8 000 000 USD as it had to clean the vessel and apply for recertification in order to use the vessel for further shipments.  As a result this shipping line has banned all flexitanks. Other shipping lines have made a note of this bitter experience and made a list of flexitanks approved for sea carriage. Typically approved flexitank manufactures are members of the Container Owners Association and produce flexitanks in strong compliance with Recommended Code of Practices for Flexitanks developed by the organization.

 “Transport:”  How to estimate the quality of flexitank?  Does Russia prefer to stick to specific criteria? And the whole process is organized differently?

Indeed it is true. Russian Railways (RZD) is responsible for 80% of the inland transportation. Chinese flexitanks are not accepted by American and European railroads as these packages fail to withstand stressful shipping conditions. Only the most reliable flexitank system can sustain our railroads and secure safety of the transported cargo. Car coupling and vast territories make shipments in a flexitank a real challenge. Nevertheless, there are companies who continue to promote flexitanks made in China.

One Chinese flexitank prototype passed the RZD test on the fourth attempt by using wider steel bars (50x100x4 mm) and covering the container walls with plywood (10-12 mm).  These costly additions did not provide economic savings for utilizing a flexitank on rail.

Putting this in perspective, our BIG Red Flexitank has successfully passed all testing on the first try and became the first flexitank officially approved by RZD. On top of that, we use a standard flexitank system without any additional ‘strengthening’ equipment.

When it comes to other differences, our flexitank reservoir is 50% heavier than any Chinese made equivalent. Hardly anyone notices at first glance that our three-layer flexitank  is 1.5 times heavier than a Chinese flexitank sewn with five layers. Elongation of the inner polyethylene layer of Big Red Flexitank is 800%. Our reinforced outer polypropylene layer controls liquid motion, protecting the container from damages. Chinese flexitanks made with 4 inner layers of thin polyethylene create an illusion of safety, but in fact they rip one by one under high pressures.

“Transport:”  You seem to be quite knowledgeable of Chinese made flexitanks.

Our experience is firsthand, because our initial manufacturing facility was located in China.  We cooperated with the facility, supplied it with raw materials and introduced the manufacturing process. However, within a short period of time we became dissatisfied with the quality of our flexitank and we were forced to make a very hard, but undoubtedly, right decision to move our production facility to the USA.