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…
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…
After five years where containerships seemed to stabilise in size at a capacity of around 18,000 Twenty Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) in size, shipping companies are building bigger again. Now the biggest containership has a capacity of nearly 21,500 TEU. What’s the push behind building bigger? Economies of scale – the bigger the ships, the…
There’s a race on to power the transport of the future. Carbon isn’t even in the running. The two front runners are hydrogen and batteries as a method of storing electricity. In this piece we will look at a zero carbon emission hydrogen extraction and storage plant that sits in a shipping container, while reflecting…
We’ve touched on some great uses for shipping containers here at the Gateway Gazette. Here’s one of the most purposeful: a lifeboat station in a shipping container. This isn’t some rusty box dragged onto a beach, but is one where the entire lifeboat station and boat are built in the UK and donated to countries…
In September 2016 there was a statewide power outage across South Australia. Renewable energy haters leapt into the fray, wrongly blaming the wind energy supplying the grid in the storm. Much to the chagrin of the renewable energy haters, the solution to the problem was found in a Tesla battery system and not a new…
New electric powered container carrying barges are being built to carry shipping containers around Europe’s inland waterways. Highways of ages The great rivers of Europe, including the Rhine, Seine and Danube, have been the major cargo highways of the continent for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Despite the advantages of trucks and trains, they are…
Moving a shipping container around the world today is a lot more efficient than the old ‘break bulk’ method. Though on the ground the movements can be quite simple, there is still a lot of inefficiency in getting a company to handle those movements. After establishing the problem we will look at four companies trying…