Big containerships have a big problem – they frequently can’t see other vessels when they come in too close to their bows. The first thing they may know of a potential collision is after they have rammed and sank the other vessel. Maersk have recently hired the US AI and automation company Sea Machines to get…
Prisoners serving time in Auckland are to learn construction skills while converting shipping containers into op shops for the Shakti charity. This is a win-win. The prisoners converting the shipping containers into the shops will be able to learn new skills that will help get them jobs and hopefully stay out of trouble on their…
A new shipping container farm has opened in Brisbane, supplying local businesses with herbs and vegetables that may otherwise have had to be imported from far away. The farm owner went into container farming due to drought on his own land. With our ever less predictable climate, there’s a risk that what arable topsoil we…
Shipping container logistics is about driving efficiencies into the supply chain. A lot of those inefficiencies being driven out are humans. The Shanghai Yangshan Deep-Water Port has been billed as the ‘word’s first unmanned container port’, which isn’t exactly true – to unload and reload a containership it requires nine men in an office, not…
A university in Germany is developing a robot to unload shipping containers. This is one of the most complex processes in shipping container logistics. Robots on the march One of the coolest things about shipping containers is that they can carry almost anything and be moved around the world in a super-efficient process that is…
The container shipping industry has an old fashioned system where booking a container on a ship requires no monetary deposit – it relies on trust between the client and shipping company. The problem is that the sector is full of untrustworthy people who do not always ship the container they promised the shipping company they…
Shipping containers come in two main sizes – the 20 foot container (1 TEU) and the 40 foot container (2 TEU). A company in the US has just launched a 1 TEU shipping container home called the Vista C that is small enough to be sent almost anywhere in the world, yet has the facilities…
A family in the Caribbean island of Costa Rica had a bit of a problem – their three grown up boys were getting under their parents’ feet, needed more space, yet did not have the funds to build or buy their own homes. The solution? Three shipping container ‘cargotecture’ homes were built on the family’s…
A businessman has been given an award for the way he hid his shipping container storage unit in plain sight. No matter the wonders of shipping containers – they don’t fit just anywhere… They can sit very well in a post-industrial landscape full of old warehouses and port machinery. The quasi brutalist nature of the…
Let’s look at prisons made out of shipping containers. Those who live a crime free life, with their biggest rebellion having three glasses of wine over dinner instead of just one, may think that prisons should be hellholes for people to rot in. There’s a problem with that – people don’t reform in adverse situations….