Bitumen Packing Comparison


	BULK SHIPMENTS (Bitumen Vessel – Terminal – Tanker)	Used (or) New Drums	Poly Bags
Shipping Method	Special Bitumen Vessels – Heated Cargo	Standard Shipping Containers 18MT-20MT per Container	Standard Shipping Container 20mt per container
Shipping Availability/Reliability	Limited availability, cyclical supply	Excellent	Excellent
Shipping Cost	Expensive, freights vary with demand, difficult to budget for long term projects.	Affordable	Affordable
Storage	Extremely capital intensive in bulk terminals, high operating costs, major overheads	Standard Warehouses or directly on site	Standard Warehouses or directly on site
Handling	Bulk road tankers to deliver directly on site. Expensive but swift.	Forklifts, 5-6 drums/mt. Used Drums can leak. New drums if mishandled may break as well.Damaged drums that do not break will become difficult to decant.	3.5ton Fork lifts can handle 2 x 1mt bags at a time. All bags double slinged and self-stabilizing. Can go straight from container to Melter in one move. Highly efficient handling.
Ground Transport	Expensive Bitumen Tankers – cargo continuously heated.	Standard trailers, can visit remote locations in smaller flat beds as well. Cheap and affordable.	Standard trailers, can visit remote locations in smaller flat beds as well. Cheap and affordable.
Wastage	Certain revolving %age will always remain in the vessel, terminal tank and road tanker. A direct loss.	3-5% is always left in the drum and is wasted.	Inner lining is completely consumable. 100% of transported cargo is consumed.
Decanting / Melting	Product is always in liquid state, easy and immediate decanting.	Each drum has to be cut open (often manually). This is an arduous and inefficient task. Messy and often product is left behind in the drum.	Simple. Outer bag is cut away and the inner lining and cargo is melted in one go.
Environmental Impact	Large carbon footprint for entire supply chain as energy is used to keep the cargo heated throughout.	Very Poor as a steel drum has to be produced for just 160 – 180kg of bitumen. A 1000mt project results in 5000+ empty drums to be disposed of. The used drums will have bitumen residue that will inevitably pollute the ground and storage/scrap	Inner lining is 100% consumable and outer lining is 100% recyclable.
Other Points	Expensive, large carbon footprint and huge capital needs to be invested into a distribution chain that should be obsolete by now.	Old drums could cross contaminate the bitumen. New Drums are expensive.	Triple layered technology and an outer woven polypropylene bag ensures chance of leakage is negated.