Many worry about containerships being idle or laid up, especially about the recent lay up of the triple Es. Ships got bigger whereas the cargo trade did not grow to occupy all these big ships. If looked in a miniscule level, many containers travel empty and weightless across oceans occupying space on board a ship without generating equivalent revenue.
It is being estimated that at least 24.1% of the total container transport volume are empty units, which equates to one hundred and fifty 21,000 TEU vessels sailing non-stop for a whole year.
Probably this has made the trio – Juan Ureta, Jesus Garcia and Francisco Aguilar develop a new innovative concept of Connectainers.
So What are Connectainers?
The 20-foot container can be joined to other “Connectainers” to form a 40-foot container, or disconnected again, by two people in 30 minutes. Connectainer is watertight, structurally resistant and keeps the internal and external dimensions of present containers so it is compatible with multimodal transportation.
Francisco Aguilar of Connectainer explains: “Any 40’ can be disconnected to form 2×20’. And this easy operation can be done in 30 minutes by two smooth operators”.
“Lines even don’t need to replace all their stock; we’re just talking of avoiding 12% of worldwide moves. Bearing in mind each connection/disconnection avoids three empty moves, 10% of Connectainers in stock will be enough, even considering seasonal accumulation of stocks in some areas.”
Source: Port Technology International (PTI) on YouTube
