Foldable Containers to Reduce the Costs of Empty Transport? A Cost–Benefit Analysis from a Chain and Multi-Actor Perspective

Rob Konings ()
Additional contact information
Rob Konings: Delft University of Technology, OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies, PO Box 5030, Delft 2600 GA, The Netherlands.

Maritime Economics & Logistics, 2005, vol. 7, issue 3, 223-249

Abstract: Transport of empty containers, which arises from the need to reposition containers, is an expensive business. This holds in particular for shipping lines, which are usually responsible for container repositioning and have to bear these container management costs. Shipping lines are known to follow various strategies to reduce the costs of empty transport. A rather unfamiliar, but interesting option to save costs is the possibility to fold empty containers. This could save transport costs, but also transhipment and storage costs. In this paper, we analyse the opportunities for commercial application of foldable containers. For this purpose a cost–benefit analysis is adopted in which four logistic concepts to use foldable containers are presented as a framework for analysis. The costs and benefits of using foldable containers in these logistic concepts are calculated and compared with the situation in which standard containers are used. It is shown that the use of foldable containers can lead to substantial net benefits in the total chain of container transport. However, much depends on the additional costs that foldable containers cause, that is, the cost of folding and unfolding, additional exploitation costs and any additional transport to places where folding and unfolding can take place. The logistic concept plays a part in it, but it should be a great challenge for designers and container producers to develop a foldable container that generates limited additional costs. Maritime Economics & Logistics (2005) 7, 223–249. doi:10.1057/palgrave.mel.9100139

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/mel/journal/v7/n3/pdf/9100139a.pdf Link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/mel/journal/v7/n3/full/9100139a.html Link to full text HTML (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:marecl:v:7:y:2005:i:3:p:223-249

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/41278/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Maritime Economics & Logistics is currently edited by Hercules E. Haralambides

More articles in Maritime Economics & Logistics from Palgrave Macmillan, International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().