Sea Containers: 8 Weird and Wonderful Facts
July 19, 2018- 5 million sea containers are in active transit.
The total number of active sea containers is somewhere around 5 million.
- In total, it’s estimated that there are approximately 530 million sea containers in the world.
In addition to the containers currently in use by shipping companies, this figure includes containers that have been decommissioned and are now used for self-storage and modifications, as well as those that have sitting at the back of a warehouse for the last 20 years.
- Approximately 82 percent of the world’s sea containers are manufactured in China, due to low labour costs.
Until 1995, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and most of Europe were producing their shipping containers in Mainland China. Since 1996, CIMC is the largest manufacturer of ISO containers in the world, and by 2017 China produced 82% of the entire world supply of ISO sea containers
- When properly maintained, a sea container has an average life expectancy of 30 years.
However, they are often used after their depreciable/cargo life has expired (and in many cases, actually increase their profitability!)
- Sea containers weren’t invented until the 1950s when Malcolm McLean invented the precursor to what is now the modern container.
He was a transport entrepreneur who developed the modern intermodal-shipping container, which revolutionized transport and international trade in the second half of the twentieth century. Containerization led to a significant reduction in the cost of freight transportation by eliminating the need for repeated handling of individual pieces of cargo, and also improved reliability, reduced cargo theft, and cut inventory costs by
- Approximately 10,000 shipping containers are lost at sea every year; the equivalent to one per hour.
Right now, as you read this, there are five or six million shipping containers on enormous cargo ships sailing across the world’s oceans. And about every hour, on average, one is falling overboard never to be seen again. It’s estimated that 10,000 of these large containers are lost at sea each year.
- Every shipping container has a unique ID number, similar to the number plate on a car. This means they can be tracked regardless of where they are in the world.
Ship container tracking is a necessity more than anything. With advancement in technology, now it has become possible for most companies to always know the exact location of their ship and further notify their customers using this tracking ID which is unique to every single container.
- In Australia, there are 31 modern houses built entirely out of decommissioned shipping containers.
The appeal of a shipping container-made house is that it’s the ideal compact, affordable, low maintenance, durable shell and enough open space for you to design your home how you like! We’re likely to see many more of these in the future as more containers are decommissioned for cargo/industrial use.
For more information on a shipping container that’s right for you, get in touch with the team at U-Move today!