SEW Tea and Space Travel?

Von Denis Sherstoboev

Friday, 30 April 2004, midnight in the steppes of Kazakhstan. The US astronaut Mike Foale has just landed. He has spent 194 days in space as part of the ISS crew. As a welcome, he is first given hot tea by the Russian space agency Roskosmos. We do not know which kind of tea Astronaut Foale had the pleasure to enjoy. But chances are, it came from one of the five largest suppliers in Russia. Combined, they cover half of the market between them. Russia is the largest tea market in the world. Rising incomes will continue to see the demand for premium types of tea and especially brand teas increase in the future. In order to cover this enormous demand, Russian tea suppliers rely on automation for their production. Automated filling and sealing of tea bags, automated filling of cartons containing the tea bags and automated packing of the cartons in transport boxes. Unilever CIS uses packaging machines from Lipsia for this purpose in St Petersburg. SEW drives, such as PSC planetary gear units, CMP servomotors, Spiroplan gearmotors, Movidrive and Movitrac, ensure that tea cartons are packed quickly and accurately in shipping boxes around the clock to quench the Russians‘ ever increasing thirst for tea. And the taste for tea elsewhere.