Transport Transformed

CONTAINERISED

Itis little surprise that the global seaborne container industry is booming.

As the world becomes ever- connected, combined with the fact consumer and commercial demands for rapid turnaround times are increasing, the market for efficient, timely shipping is growing.

Take 2017. Container transport across the oceans accounted for 60 percent of all sea trade, activity equating to around $12 trillion in value and forecast to grow at 4.7 percent to the end of 2019.

This growth has been made possible by the massive increase in the size of ships and subsequent capacity of freightliners. Over the last 40 years, deadweight tonnage of container ships has risen from approximately 11 million to more than 250 million tonnes.

However, a second revolution is gathering momentum.

While larger ships have permitted enormous financial growth and helped drive improved living standards across the world, it has come at a monumental cost to the environment.

Just 15 of the largest container ships in operation today match the carbon emissions of every car on the planet. In country terms, the shipping industry ranks between Germany and Japan as the sixth largest polluter on earth.

Efficiency of such operations, therefore, is paramount in ensuring that supply chains worldwide continue to fuel the demands of customers and minimise their environmental impact at the same time.

Enter Goodpack. Established and named from a contract to provide a shipping solution to tyre-making giant Goodyear in the 1990s, its inventive, collapsible system has been a gamechanger for the rubber industry.

Company founder David Lam spotted the flaw of splintering wood- based packaging and designed a metal-based, reusable solution that offered an efficient and safe means of transporting valuable rubber payloads.

“In the mid-1980s Goodyear mandated a non-fibre, non-wood packaging for its natural rubber,” explains Goodpack CEO Eric Gregoire.

“At the time Japan was leading the way with metal containers, but the key was that they were not collapsible. The challenge David Lam confronted was making a metal container economically viable, especially in the context of returns from the USA. It took him the best part of a decade to solve the problem and bring a solution to market, but he did.”

Having introduced a revolutionary mode of containerised transport, Goodpack is expanding its global network to help supply chains across a range of industries to become more efficient and sustainable