Prihláste sa na odber noviniek
As economies transform across the world, humankind shifts away from fossil fuels and towards circular economy. In it, waste becomes a raw material and instead of throwing waste away, it is being reprocessed. A long-term business in this area in Slovakia is performed by a company that also transports liquid waste with the help from ZSSK CARGO.
Company DETOX from Banská Bystrica was founded nearly thirty years ago and it deals with processing and recycling of waste. Its business includes collection and processing of industrial and dangerous wastes.
Strong recycling background in Rimavská Sobota
In the south of central Slovakia, in Rimavská Sobota, DETOX has its largest plant, spanning on 65,000 m2. It produces heating oils from used industrial oils. Through distillation it also processes solvents. Its significant customers are the automotive plants. Company’s large tanks can take as much as 800,000 litres of liquid waste. An active railway siding is an inherent part on its premises. Through the siding, tank wagons full of liquid waste are moved to the unloading point. Then the waste is pumped to storage tanks before further processing.
Changing of the industrial landscape
Due to the character of Slovak industry, railway transportation was dominantly used in the past. Heavy industry was producing large amounts of liquid wastes in a single spot, from where wagonloads or groups of wagons headed to Rimavská Sobota. Today, the situation is different. „Today’s industrial landscape is predominantly formed by smaller companies, producing less liquid wastes on more locations. To collect them, trucks are more suitable. Apart from that, many railway sidings were cancelled which limited the filling options. We have, for example, looked for a suitable siding around Banská Bystrica, but we have not found such one“, says Marián Ridzoň, head of customer centre at DETOX.
Challenges associated with railway transportation
Filling points for tank cars are very demanding on strict environmental approval procedures and building them has no reasonable financial returns for companies. Slovakia is, at the same time, a small country, while railways are more suitable for large volumes of goods, or long distances. The use of intermodal combination of road and rail is hindered by a small network of terminals in Slovakia.
Saving the environment twice
The environment is saved twice in DETOX Rimavská Sobota. By recycling the waste itself they prevent potentially large environmental damages. Despite all challenges, they still regularly use railways for transportation of liquid waste. Even though these are not large volumes, it is a stable waste transportation in 2-3 wagons between Trnava and Rimavská Sobota. Tank cars are shuttled between two production facilities of DETOX. In Trnava, the plant accumulates industrial waste from western Slovakia. From here, shipment of liquid waste by rail heads to a train-forming station Bratislava-východ. From there, these wagons move in mixed freight trains into other such stations in Zvolen and then further to the south of Slovakia in Lučenec. Then they are moved by regional trains to Jesenské and Rimavská Sobota. All of that is naturally managed by ZSSK CARGO, being the only company offering such network-wide service in Slovakia. It also provides so-called „last mile“, i.e. the siding service for DETOX.
From customer to supplier
There is an additional level of cooperation between these two companies. Company DETOX is a customer of ZSSK CARGO on one hand, it is also its supplier on the other hand. That is because the siding is also fed by other, empty tank cars. They are cleaned inside the company, so that they can be used to haul other liquids. „We have obtained European certificate for rail tank cars cleaning as the first company in Slovakia. We can clean them so that after transporting for example oil, wagons can haul oil again next time, but also any other product suitable for the specific type of the tank car,“ adds M. Ridzoň.
This cooperation increases the business on this siding in Rimavská Sobota, adding wagonloads to trains too. From Rimavská Sobota, leaving tank cars are ready for any liquid product transport. You can order them too – all you need to do is to contact sales manager for commodity chemistry and petroleum products, or your appropriate regional sales manager of ZSSK CARGO.
