Brilliant idea. How long before the Chinese steal it?*
From Bloomberg via gCaptain, November 15:
Few tools of the global economy have survived without major innovations as long as the shipping container. The supply ructions around the world are presenting an opportunity to test that incumbency.
As ports, rail yards and warehouses get clogged up with the standardized metal boxes both empty and full of goods, the stars are aligning for a product that was a hard sell before the pandemic: shipping containers that fold up accordion- or collapsible-style to as much as one-fifth their usual size. At least, that’s what their backers are hoping.
Almost 27% of the 862 million crates measured in 20-foot equivalent units that pass through the world’s ports this year will be empty, according to Drewry estimates. The cost to the shipping industry to get them to places where they’ll be loaded is about $20 billion, Boston Consulting Group has calculated. Many will spend days or weeks taking up space in already-jammed holding areas and depots, compounding delays along supply chains.
All this has executives everywhere from Amazon.com Inc. to pop culture-inspired bobblehead maker Funko Inc. and milk-alternative producer Oatly grappling with how to get the necessary shipping containers to transport their wares.
“We can solve part of this imbalance, or at least the inefficiency of transporting air,” said Hans Broekhuis, chief executive officer at Holland Container Innovations Nederland BV, known as 4Fold....
December 2020
More on the Shipping Container Shortage: "A Mafia"
It was in a study from the CSIS that I first learned China produces 96% of the world's shipping containers, if interested see below for more....
