It’s one of those images that will prob­ably feature in the rundown of top news stories for years to come, if not decades: the giant container ship “Ever Given” grounded and lodged side­ways in the Suez Canal. At the end of March, this colossal vessel blocked the vital ship­ping route between the Mediter­ranean and the Red Sea for six long days, causing a traffic jam of 422 ships – and making some colleagues in Germany and China break out in a sweat.

Because at that very same time, our Uhlmann line, comprising the BLU 200, C 200, S 500 and ECP 12, was making its way to the China National Phar­ma­ceu­tical Machinery Expo­si­tion (CIPM) in Qingdao where a live demo was sched­uled for the expo visi­tors between May 10 and 12. The ship carrying the containers with our precious cargo was not stuck in the Suez Canal. But because it could not get through, it had to take a detour around the whole of Africa – a route that cost two whole weeks.

A few days before the opening of the fair, the line arrives in China.

Now it's time to get going ...

... with combined forces ...

... and a direct line to Laupheim.

In the end, the booth and the line are up and running as planned.

The line in action impresses the audi­ence at the CIPM.

The efforts of our colleagues from Uhlmann China have paid off.

Arrived at the port in the nick of time

A few days before the trade fair opened, the ship arrived in China. But the journey was not over yet: the line still had to go through customs, and this normally takes a few days. But the team from Uhlmann China had prepared every­thing under the strong support from the orga­nizer so perfectly that we got the complete line through customs within just a day.

But in a year still grap­pling with coro­n­avirus, there was precious little time to relax: Normally, fitters from Laupheim will travel to a trade show to install a new line. However, due to the pandemic, the service tech­ni­cians from Uhlmann China were trained online instead, and promptly demon­strated their newly won exper­tise: with the help of instruc­tions, photo docu­men­ta­tion, and the liter­ally tire­less efforts of their colleagues from Laupheim over the phone, they assem­bled the machines of the new line, some of which had been disman­tled, within three and a half days. Marketing, product manage­ment and project manager agree: they did an excel­lent job!

Without this team effort, the CIPM visi­tors would have had to settle for Plan B, which we put together “just in case”: this contin­gency plan included a printout of the entire line in orig­inal size with videos of the stations at various points. Thanks to this cross-site collab­o­ra­tion, our colleagues in China were able to dispense with the printout, thus allowing the visi­tors to get a real “taste” of our machines’ capa­bil­i­ties. The Uhlmann line in action: an image that, perhaps for some, will remain just as firmly etched in their minds as that of the “Ever Given” stranded in the Suez Canal.