Drum handling equipment for Bulandshahr Road, Ghaziabad

The closure, which is where leaks begin

Almost every drum leak we are told about starts at the bung, and almost every one of those was hand-tightened by somebody in a hurry.

A bung has a torque figure. Tightened by feel it is either loose — and it will weep through a journey of vibration — or over-tightened, which distorts the gasket and produces the same result more slowly.

Use the tool made for it and check the first and last drum of every batch. This costs nothing and prevents the class of incident that ends up on a transporter's floor.

Where a drum is reused, the gasket is the part nobody replaces. It is cheap, it hardens with age and solvent, and it is the reason a perfectly good drum leaks.

Moving drums without hurting anybody

A full two-hundred-litre drum is beyond what people should be handling by strength, and it is handled that way daily.

A drum carrier or lifter makes it a one-person job and removes the moment when a drum is tipped and caught. Where drums are decanted, a tilting cradle is the piece that matters, because pouring from a hand-held drum is where burns and spills come from.

Choose by the rim. A drum with a rolled lip takes a different grab from one with a ring, and plastic drums are different again — the equipment is not interchangeable and a grab that slips on a plastic drum is dangerous.

Tell us the drum type and material with the enquiry, and whether they are moved full or empty.

Small packs, and the line behind them

Most units here also fill smaller packs — cans, jerricans, bottles — and that is a filling and capping question rather than a handling one.

Filling, capping and can sealing machines are manufactured by PackForge Industries, a division of Fulcrum Infratech Pvt. Ltd.

What our own works builds is what happens after: the carton sealed, the outer strapped, the pallet wrapped and moved.

Where the two halves have to work together, tell us the whole line at the enquiry rather than one machine at a time. It is the same company either way.

Buying for a chemical floor

Equipment in a chemical area meets spillage, and spillage decides how long it lasts.

Ask what the machine's exposed parts are made of and how they are cleaned. A machine standing where solvent is handled will meet solvent eventually, whatever the procedure says.

Keep the packing area away from decanting where the floor allows it. Where it does not, plan drainage and bunding before you plan the machine.