THE CONTAINER FEST

 

41. THE CONTAINER FEST

Investment analysts, Goldman Sachs, estimates that by 2050 the Gross Domestic Product of China, India and Japan of these three countries would double that of the United States. Moreover, by then the three richest nations of the world would be China, America and India, in that order. Japan will take up the fourth place.

The influence exerted by a leapfrogging economy on the commercial sector is well known. Maritime trade is going to witness revolutionary changes. New styles and new technology in ship building and port development will bring about fundamental changes in the sector.

It can be said a beginning to these changes was made with the advent of the container system. It was an idea that got into the mind of a 24- year old truck owner that sparked the container revolution. The hardships involved in driving trucks into the ship and in handling goods, made Malcom McLean to devise a simple method for the transhipment of goods. He made square boxes in different sizes for keeping the goods which were then easy to be loaded onto the trucks and later into the ships.

The change brought about by the new device to the commercial sector was much beyond the wildest dreams of McLean. Following up his invention, McLean developed trucks suitable for carrying containers and then container ships. His first container ship left New Jersey port in 1956.

It took over a decade for the world to realise the potentialities of the containers. It was during the Vietnam War that Pentagon realised the importance of containers for the shipment of weapons. That marked a good development phase for the containers. After making the deliveries of the armaments, the containers were diverted to Japanese ports for shipment of consumer items from there for the American market. Japanese businessmen also found this a very profitable enterprise.

The container revolution received a thrust because of its economic gains on the one side and the ease of operation on the other. It was very easy for the loading and unloading of the containers from and to the ships as also transport to the warehouses. For the earlier form of freight transport, the loading-unloading wages came to as much as 25 per cent. With the introduction of containerisation this could be brought down considerably. The goods could be easily loaded or unloaded and transported. The usual thefts on the wharf became a thing of the past.

From now on it will be the age of the containers. Ships, trucks and roads are being made suited to container movement.

We cannot also close our eyes to the challenges posed by the container revolution. It is possible that the container industry is misused for clandestine operations of the terrorists and extremists. Instances are not far to seek.

American State Department asserts there is proof that A Q Khan, father of the atom bomb in Pakistan, had used containers for the smuggling of fission material for some foreign powers.

In 2002 the Italian police foiled a bid by a terrorist group to smuggle out some terrorists in a container. In one ship going to Canada from Egypt, a suspected terrorist, Amid Farid Rizk, was found holed up inside a furnished container, with all facilities inside, including bed and toilet,laptop, computer and satellite phone.

Established governments the world over are now making efforts to foresee and check further misuse of the container system, for smuggling, transport of illegal weapons and fake currencies. America is taking other nations into confidence to ensure that adequate security checks are made before the containers are loaded onto ships. In the U S this task has been assigned to an administrative wing named Container Security Initiative.

Steps were also taken with the help of technology to easily detect any foulplay in the use of the containers. Giant IT firms like IBM, and Saving Technology have been roped in to develop necessary technology in this regard.

At present about twenty million containers are in operation in the seas. In the next six years this number will get doubled. Spectacular changes are also being made in the size and structure of the ships. Ships as long as half a kilometre are in the process of development. They are double the size of the longest ships available now. The ship could accommodate goods carried by trucks lined up for a length of 70 km

Containers have come to stay and 110 fast growing economies like India should fast track its efforts to reap benefit out of the emerging container fest.