Page 39 - Port Of Hamburg Magazine 01.2018

more normed and more interchangeable than a container.”
The steel box has hardly changed at all since the first container was built. The first containers were still made of aluminium, clad inside with wood waist-high, and with none of the typical corrugation of the walls. In the 1970s production switched completely to steel, and the design gradually modified, permitting optimi- zation of the box’s unladen weight and stability. “The container is now a mature product. Nevertheless, new ideas and attempts to revolutionize the container are repeatedly coming up,” says Bunke.
In recent years there have been intriguing schemes for a great variety of container innovations. Many of these aim to reduce transport of empty boxes. The Tworty Box, for instance, consists of a special 20-ft container that can be added to another Tworty Box to form a fully functional 40-ft container offering uninter- rupted interior space. Holland Container Innovations has pursued another idea. With the 4FOLD, it has de- veloped a folding 40-ft high cube container that can be shrunk into a quarter of its original volume. “In practice, as a rule these container innovations do not
gain acceptance, with the disadvantages, for example of higher maintenance and repair costs, proving deci- sive,” says the Managing Director.
Even after 20 years, Achim Bunke remains as fasci- nated as ever by containers. Over and over again, he’s surprised by the host of possibilities for using them – a container can be virtually anything. A box is what you make it. Just recently an order from Stuttgart playground builders KuKuk Box demonstrated this. The company rebuilds containers as mobile and imag- inative playgrounds. Yet this idea was born of an emergency. KuKuk Box was commissioned to build a playground in a crisis area in Nepal. The material for this was delivered in a container. Yet return transport of the box would have driven costs above plan and so on the spur of the moment it was integrated into the play equipment. The outcome was so persuasive that KuKuk Box then further developed and perfected the idea. And the scheme gained acceptance. These con- tainer playgrounds have now been erected in numer- ous European cities. “Orders from playground build- ers KuKuk Box are close to the hearts of the whole team and are a joy for us every time,” agree the two container professionals. ■
50 YEARS OF CONTAINERS IN HAMBURG ■
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