Container innovation: foldabilty 01/12/21
< Retour à la liste
Necessity is the mother of invention - a chance to reduce costs and CO2 emissions in container transport
At almost the same time, two reports emerged that innovations in the construction or use of containers could advantageously improve the efficiency of container transport chains.
photo: HCIThere are more potential benefits, including a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Importantly, the dissemination of the proposed solutions may reduce the operational costs of transport, and in the future - reduce the scale of congestion in ports, which is now a great problem, also affecting freight rates.
Foldable container
The Dutch company Holland Container Innovations (HCI) has announced that in 2022 it will start large-scale tests on the Shanghai - Chicago - Shanghai route using the patented, innovative 4FOLD container. From 2020, he tested them to a limited extent for the transport of Procter & Gamble products, including from Shanghai to Cyprus and South Africa.
The 4FOLD container is the size of a traditional 40-foot container (FEU). But thanks to its new properties, it can be assembled easily using a forklift (it takes up to 10 minutes). Four such complex containers take up the same space and space as traditional FEU. In fact, this is intuitively enough to prove that the potential benefits of their popularization in logistics can be achieved. However, he describes them in detail, based on an interview with a representative of HCI, the American portal Ajot.com (American Journal of Transport).
A large-scale experiment
The new 4FOLD containers will be used to transport imported goods from Shanghai via the Port of Seattle or Port Vancouver, from where they will be first transported by cars, then loaded onto the railroad and transported to Chicago. On their way back, they will make the same journey, but already in the form of empty, packed containers. Empty container dislocation plays an important role in the logistics chain. On the one hand, there are periodically too few of them at the ports of loading. On the other hand, their excess in "import" ports slows down transhipment operations, because they take up places for unloaded containers with goods.
Effects
The portal lists the following exemplary benefits of compensating four empty FEUs into one:
- fewer truck drivers are needed to transport them to ports, and so does
- fewer rail cars are needed for the same purpose,
- the storage space for empty containers is reduced (in the port, but also in other places of its storage),
- less capacity is needed on ships,
- fewer operations are performed across the entire supply chain.
The expected cost of purchasing a 4FOLD container will be higher than that of a standard forty-foot container. However, it will be more than compensated by savings in logistics operations and reduction of losses resulting from delays in container turnover, reports HCI.
Reduction of CO2 emissions
HCI itself emphasizes that the main reason for the agreements already concluded with selected shipping lines regarding participation in the experiment is to reduce CO2 emissions in transport. The company reminds that annually over 800 million containers are transported around the world, of which 20 percent are in maritime transport and 40 percent. "It only carries air." So there are about 200 million of them. Their compensation by a quarter will significantly reduce the costs of container dislocation and CO2 emissions.
What's next?
The 4FOLD container has a fairly rich history. Its technology was developed in 2008 by the start-up Holland Container Innovations, established at the University of Delft. The first foldable HCI container was built in 2013. And in 2016, the European Union included the 4FOLD project in the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, thanks to which the company obtained funding for product development.
The 4FOLD container implementation process has already passed a series of tests in use by 15 shipping lines and shippers, and has been stored in 60 warehouses in various ports. The product itself has obtained 11 patents and several certificates and approvals for use, including UIC (International Union of Railways) and AAR (Association of American Railways).
Better use of a known container
John McCown of Blue Alpha Capital, who has worked for 20 years with container pioneer Malcom McLean, is pushing for the adoption of 53-foot containers in American logistics, reports Splash 247. McCown calculates that a ship configured to carry goods in containers of length 53 feet (FTEU), would require 33 percent. fewer (operational) movements and less time to handle the same volume of goods as are transported in the 40-foot containers that dominate the circulation. Logistic activities and costs when handling three FEUs are the same as when handling two FTEU containers.
According to McCown, the cost savings from these differences in logistics processes are many times greater than "US-flagged crew costs". And yet savings can be made in other links of transport. The incentive for more use of "large" containers is that most US trucks are made to transport them (as opposed to EU regulations), and they can also be stacked on trains.
McCown also believes that "the ideal candidate to launch such a new service is JB Hunt, one of the largest US shipping service providers and owner of most 53-foot containers. He was also a pioneer in placing loads in two levels on wagons.