The HCI Foldable Container can save 25% on the costs for empty container transport
Empty containers are transported over land and sea, as well as stored and handled. Employing the HCI Foldable Container has several benefits for shipping lines on these segments, a study done in cooperation with shipping lines and ports shows that signifcant savings can be achieved:
•up to 25% cost savings on the sea leg
•up to 46% cost savings on the land leg
•up to 25% quay time savings in the terminal
•up to 75% storage space saving
Overall this allows for a 25% reduction in all costs associated with containers for shipping lines. For more information please contact Holland Container Innovations.
Why is folding an empty container so beneficial?
In the past decade the continuous growth in global trade and freight distribution has led to a large demand for new containers. Production reached a new high of over 3.5 million TEU in 2008 bringing the estimated global number of containers to 25 million TEUs.
The major part of the transport of manufactured goods takes place with containers. These global containerized flows are characterized by large imbalances. These are linked with a disconnect between the manufacturing of mass consumption goods of export-oriented economies and large consumption markets such as North America and Europe. The Asian segment is the one that has experienced the fastest growth while transatlantic containerized trade between Europe and North America has become comparatively a low volume market.
The imbalances cause several undesirable side-effects. In the United States, there are at all times 300,000 to 400,000 empty containers waiting to find cargo. For New York, there are about 100,000 empty containers belonging to leasing companies and 50,000 empty containers belonging to shipping companies in various depots and terminals. In Europe the same issue applies, in 2008 the Port of Rotterdam had a throughput of 2.3 million TEU empty containers out of a total throughput of 10.7 million TEU. These empty containers need to be stored as well as transported, either to a depot or to a client to be filled with goods. Eventually these empty containers need to be transported back to Asia. Next to the actual transport and storage this requires many handling operations. The combination of these factors makes transporting empty standard containers a very expensive business.
