Keetwonen, 1000 shipping containers from China modified into student housing in Amsterdam, is the largest shipping container housing development in the world. It has been praised for its innovation, cost effectiveness and design.
For students, living in modified shipping containers is actually better than it sounds on paper. Each unit addresses many of the common concerns for students living in student housing such as privacy and cleanliness, while retaining the social aspects of living in dorms. Each unit includes amenities such as private bathroom, kitchen, separate sleeping and study room areas, ventilation, heat, hot water heater, large windows and even private balcony.
[Continue Reading →]
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Tags: · architecture, containers, design, interesing, Offbeat
The data visualization above represents the worlds 10 largest container shipping companies by TEU capacity. We created this chart using IBM’s Many Eye’s project which we enjoy using since it gives us a clear, easy to understand and interactive picture of numeric data. Plus it looks pretty cool.
Want to know which company has the largest number of ships or the highest percentage of the overall market? If so then CLICK HERE for the interactive version.
For those who prefer more traditional data we have provided it below or CLICK HERE for the interactive version:
Source: AXS-Alphliner (February 2009)
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Tags: · apl, ap_moller, china-_shipping, cma_cgm, Container Ship, containers, container_shipping, cosco_busan, Data, data_visualization, evergreen, hanjin, hapag-lloyd, ibm, Interesting, maersk, many_eyes, Maritime, Maritime Expert, nyk_line, senator, shipping, shipping_companies, Ships, teu, Web 2.0
Crushed containers hang off the the vessel
More hang off the stern including one self-unloading box
While crossing the Pacific in late February 2008, M/V CMA CGM Dahlia ran into a strong storm, suffering significant damage. The vessel makes it to the Port of Manzanillo, Mexico where Emergency Services stand by to assess the damage. Containers hang off the starboard side since the storm hit, with more damaged on the stern.
This along with other maritime disasters can be found at cargolaw.com
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Tags: · containers, damage, incident photos, Marine Incidents, Photo
Yesterday, BBC News kicked off an exciting and unique experiment in hopes to tell the story of international trade and globalisation. In the year long experiment called “The Box”, BBC will track a standard 40 foot shipping container around the world. A GPS transmitter will be bolted to the container and so you can track its progress. BBC News reports:
It is a project which plans to deliver content for television, radio and online audiences – telling the individual stories behind what makes the global economy tick.
The Box will hopefully reach the US, Asia, the Middle East , Europe and Africa and when it does BBC correspondents will be there to report on who’s producing goods and who’s consuming them.
From the start of the voyage in Southampton this journey will be a real one and whilst we are controlling some aspects of the process for logistical reasons the story it tells will be a truly representative one painting a picture of what globalisation really means.
The experiment is named after the book by Marc Levinson titled “The Box“, which is a great story of how the shipping container changed the face of world trade.
Links:
BBC News
Tracking “The Box”
Marc Levinson’s “The Box” on Amazon.com
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Tags: · bbc, containers, experiment, gps, Interesting
Only in the eclectic world of the maritime blogosphere could the best provider of interesting content find its roots in a parking problem. Such is the case with our friends at Telstar Logistics who bring us a surprising update on the nation’s trade imbalance… there is a shortage of shipping containers. The Wall Street Journal writes:
Finding enough of the big metal boxes used to be a cinch, because the nation’s massive hunger for imports meant they were constantly arriving and stacking up from Long Beach, Calif., to Long Island, N.Y. Shipping companies typically scoured the country for anyone willing to fill outgoing boxes. But with the slump in the value of the dollar making U.S. goods more attractive to foreign buyers and many overseas economies continuing to hum, the tide has shifted in recent months. Trade figures being released Thursday are expected by many economists to show further growth in exports.
Shipping containers — and the way they’re handled — reflect how the U.S. interacts with the global economy, which is one reason the problem has emerged now. For years, the U.S. crafted a trading system that was designed to pull in masses of imported consumers goods such as sneakers and VCRs as efficiently as possible from countries like China. Far less was expected to flow the other way.
What has happened now has thrown a wrench into the works. Cutbacks by U.S. consumers have slowed the growth of imports, while the weak dollar is making the U.S. into an export machine. Meanwhile, the places where most of these exports are originating are far from where boxes are being unpacked and soaring energy costs make it too costly to just load them on trucks and move them around.
“There are some places, particularly in the Midwest, where there’s a complete lack of containers,” says Philip Damas, the head of container research at Drewry Shipping Consultants in London. [...]
Analysts say shipping costs are rising, too. Mr. Damas, the London-based consultant, says the cost of shipping a 40-foot container from the West Coast to China is now $1,500, up at least 20% in the past year. In many cases, boxes that previously would be sent to inland locations never leave the coast.
The problem surfaced about six months ago and can be traced to a confluence of factors, beyond the slump in the dollar. For one, the global commodity boom has increased the cost of shipping items by bulk, which in turn has pushed more goods into containers.
It doesn’t help that containers don’t tend to flow to places that make most U.S. exports. More imports to the U.S. are consumer goods, which are often unloaded near retailers and warehouses in large cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. In the case of Chicago, many containers come off ships from Asia and onto trains destined for “inland” destinations. But U.S. commodity exports, such as cotton and corn, are grown far from those hubs. Continue Reading…
For those interested in photography the above photo was taken by Telstar and posted to Flickr’s Big Metal Box group a must see collection of images related to…. you guessed it; shipping containers. Their must see slideshow can be found HERE.
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Tags: · containers, shipping_containers, telstar logistics
CargoLaw.com brings us the 2006 incident photos of the M/V Jeppesen Maersk: [Continue Reading →]
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Tags: · cargo, containers, incident photos, maersk, photos
Treehugger tells us of the largest temporary hotel built to date using shipping containers. They write:
We previously showed the Travelpod, an experimental prefab from Travelodge, and thought it was an interesting one-off. We were wrong; the company is looking seriously at prefab hotels and is building their first in the west London district of Uxbridge, right now. it is like a pop-up prefab:
“It could facilitate the creation of hotels on a temporary basis at times of peak demand in certain locations — such as festivals or sporting events,” the firm’s director of property and development Paul Harvey said. “A temporary structure to fill such a need would differ to the design of a permanent hotel but it could be built in as little as 12 weeks and removed quickly at the end of the event when the need is gone.” Continue Reading…
Find more interesting uses for shippign containers HERE.
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Tags: · containers, shipping_containers
WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTO
This week’s incident photo is not for the faint of heart. Bob Couttie’Maritime Accident Casebook gives the details:
The following photo is a disturbing image and we gave considerable thought to whether or not its publication would serve a useful purpose. It’s from the Blue Oceana website and tells more than any official report possibly could of the need to be safety conscious around containers. It is from an accident in Malaysia in 2005. As the Blue Oceana makes clear, it’s a continuing problem.
CLICK HERE for the photo.
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Tags: · containers, death, fatality, incident photos, Marine Incidents, Photo, shipping_container
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