{"text":[[{"start":6.44,"text":"Seventy years ago it would take at least 10 days for a ship at London Docklands to be emptied and reloaded by around 50 dockers. Pilfering was rife, accidents were commonplace and port business was vulnerable to labour strikes."}],[{"start":20.52,"text":"Then came the shipping container, an 8ft x 20ft steel box that needed increasingly vast vessels to carry an ever-expanding volume of goods. Such big ships could no longer sail up the Thames to inner London’s docks. The use of cranes to lift the boxes wiped out the need for hundreds of longshoremen."}],[{"start":38.52,"text":"“You would have seen bagged cargoes being disgorged on St Katharine Docks [to the east of Tower Bridge] in the late 1960s, but by the late 1970s it was a development scheme,” says Paddy Rodgers, director of Royal Museums Greenwich."}],[{"start":52.92,"text":"But that was not the end of London’s sea trade. Today, around 30 miles downriver at London Gateway, port operator DP World is expanding the UK’s largest container port."}],[{"start":63.56,"text":"Here it takes cranes roughly 40 hours to empty and reload a large container ship — around 20,000 steel boxes lifted by 146-metre-high computerised cranes that move two containers every three to four minutes."}],[{"start":77.32,"text":"That efficiency and scale is testament to the unglamorous steel container, an invention that has driven down shipping costs to such a low fraction of total manufacturing value that it has enabled the rapid expansion of global trade over the past 70 years."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":92.6,"text":"But humanity’s insatiable demand for consumer goods is now pushing the global shipping network to its limits. Port congestion is at historic highs, while the surge in Chinese exports means there is little to fill boxes with on the return leg, leaving shipping lines to foot the bill of carrying them back."}],[{"start":109.58,"text":"“The [trade] imbalance is getting worse,” Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive of shipping line Hapag-Lloyd, told reporters last week. “And that is a problem because that means the cost of [transporting] empty boxes is going up.”"}],[{"start":122.56,"text":"Empty containers are clogging up ports and ships are left queueing for free berth space to unload, pushing up the expense and time for shipping goods. More new ships are being built to meet growing demand, but few ports have the infrastructure to accommodate them."}],[{"start":137.56,"text":"Such is the level of congestion that around 1.8mn 20ft containers are essentially “missing” from global shipping networks at any one time, an amount roughly equivalent to the carrying capacity of the world’s eighth-largest shipping line, according to maritime analysis company Sea-Intelligence."}],[{"start":155.4,"text":"If container shipping reaches its limits, the smooth operation of transcontinental supply chains and the cross-border flow of goods could falter, marking the end of a 50-year run of cheap global trade, analysts say."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":168.04,"text":"“There’s never been a larger order book [for container ships] and there’s never been more capacity that’s going to be coming online, but global trade statistics continue to rise,” says Joe Kramek, chief executive of the World Shipping Council. With vessels beginning to hit the maximum size that ports and chokepoints such as the Suez Canal will allow, “there are natural limitations that the industry will confront as it goes forward”, he adds."}],[{"start":192.84,"text":"Humble steel boxes"}],[{"start":194.56,"text":"For decades before the 1950s there were attempts to standardise the messy business of cargo shipping. Open wooden boxes for coal to be hoisted by cranes from barges to railway carriages during the English industrial revolution were arguably the first “intermodal” containers, capable of switching from one form of transport to another."}],[{"start":214.48,"text":"The growth of rail freight across Europe also drove moves to regulate the “lift van” boxes — heavy wooden crates used in railcars. A bureau set up by the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce in June 1933 set rules for containers used in western Europe to fit crosswise on railway cars and lengthways on the flat beds of trucks."}],[{"start":236.24,"text":"Later, the US Army developed a “transporter” — a ribbed steel box just over eight feet long — that would remain sealed until the point of delivery and led to the 1952 creation of the “container express” or Conex. These boxes, which could be easily shifted between road, rail and ships, halved shipping time from the US to Korea from 55 to 27 days and reduced theft on the docks."}],[{"start":262.34,"text":"But it was a maverick trucking executive who went bankrupt several times who created the commercial container trade we know today."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":269.24,"text":"Malcom McLean started his first haulage business in 1934 out of a North Carolina gas station after spotting an opportunity to transport gasoline himself. Within a year he had nine drivers working for him and had developed a relentless obsession with cost."}],[{"start":284.44,"text":"“One of his favourite things to do was to do cost per container mile comparisons on different competitors and see what their cost was,” says John McCown, who worked with McLean for more than 20 years. “He always had a yellow pad and a pencil by his side.”"}],[{"start":299.24,"text":"After a few years, McLean’s drivers were hauling far more than oil. The trucking boss became fixated on bypassing the congestion on the US east coast. He looked at moving his vehicles by barge."}],[{"start":310.24,"text":"In 1954 he filed a patent for a standardised shipping container that could be stacked on to vessels and locked in place before being easily unfastened, lifted by crane and dropped on to trucks."}],[{"start":321.4,"text":"A year later he sold his 75 per cent stake in his trucking business for $6mn to acquire the Pan Atlantic Tanker Company, which had a fleet of old oil tankers. On April 26 1956, a converted tanker called Ideal X was loaded with 58 containers in Port Newark in New Jersey and set sail for Texas, all watched by astonished executives invited by McLean."}],[{"start":345.2,"text":"According to McLean’s 1956 calculation, loading a typical cargo ship cost $5.83 per ton. Loading Ideal X cost 15.8 cents per ton — a 97 per cent reduction."}],[{"start":358.24,"text":"Such was the discount that, despite fightback from labour unions, there was little to prevent the rapid growth of containerisation."}],[{"start":364.96,"text":"The box’s dimensions were standardised from 1968 — a step that is “frequently overlooked”, says Brian Slack, a professor in geography and planning at Concordia University, Montreal. Without it, “containerisation would not have been as revolutionary as it turned out to be”."}],[{"start":380.72,"text":"McLean died in 2001, the year that China joined the World Trade Organization."}],[{"start":385.28,"text":"By that time the reduction in freight costs brought on by the shipping container had enabled businesses to outsource production to parts of the world with vastly cheaper labour, prompting a manufacturing boom in south-east Asia that has presented an existential challenge to legacy industries in Europe and the US."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":401.48,"text":"“China would not have become the manufacturing powerhouse it is if it weren’t for the shipping container,” industrial designer Sebastian Conran says, remembering pre-container days when it would take “at least a week to get [products] on board and a week to take it off”."}],[{"start":416.88,"text":"More than 280mn journeys were made by containers between world markets last year. They bear around two-thirds of global seaborne cargo — about 60 per cent of total world trade, according to UN Trade and Development."}],[{"start":430.8,"text":"More than 7,000 container ships are currently operating. The largest can carry cargo equivalent to a 44-mile-long freight train with, for example, around 120,000 bananas or 10,000 pairs of jeans per box. The average size of the ships has more than doubled since 2000, according to the WSC."}],[{"start":451.88,"text":"Habben Jansen of shipping line Hapag-Lloyd said that trade out of Asia on the so-called “dominant leg” has “grown about 25 per cent” in the past three years and that Asian ports in particular are permanently more congested “because of that strong growth”."}],[{"start":466.56,"text":"To service the demand for goods, shipping lines have ordered larger and larger ships. The current record size for a container ship is the so-called ultra-large container vessel MSC Irina, which has a carrying capacity of 24,346 twenty-foot equivalent containers, or TEUs. The number of new container ships on order is equivalent to around 40 per cent of the current sailing fleet — a record high."}],[{"start":491.14,"text":"Ports are struggling to keep pace. “One vessel offloading 3,000 containers in a question of hours presents an enormous challenge to even the smoothest of maritime logistics chains and there are physical limits certain ports can reach, especially when historically located in cities,” says Patrick Verhoeven, managing director of the International Association of Ports and Harbors."}],[{"start":512.4,"text":"In 2019 the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had to spend $1.7bn to raise its Bayonne Bridge roadway to accommodate new megaships — a cost that was paid by taxpayers."}],[{"start":524,"text":"It is “the whole infrastructure around the ports” that is feeling the strain, says Keith Svendsen, chief executive of Maersk-owned APM Terminals, which invests in and operates ports."}],[{"start":534.08,"text":"“It is a great analogy, if you think about ports and shipping, to think about airports and planes . . . if we get a bigger plane, you need a longer runway,” he adds."}],[{"start":544.12,"text":"Container shipping lines are increasingly buying into ports and terminals in an attempt to improve the efficiency of their operations. French shipping line CMA CGM bought a controlling stake in Brazil’s main port operator in 2024, for example, while a consortium including MSC signed a $23bn deal to buy 43 port terminals from Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison last year — although the transaction is currently held up due to tensions over the Panama Canal."}],[{"start":572.44,"text":"Yet space remains too tight for the number of new ships. “The cardinal point is really the port congestion because we can have as many ships on the planet as we want. But if the ports are congested and cannot handle the ships, we will just have ships waiting,” says Soren Toft, chief executive of MSC, the world’s biggest container shipping group."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":591.88,"text":"The other issue is how to pay for the empty boxes returning from the US and Europe to China — the backhaul leg of the trip."}],[{"start":598.76,"text":"“On the Asia-US route, it used to be that for every 10 containers coming from Asia about six were going back with US exports. Today that is more like three or four [going] back full,” says one container shipping executive. “We’re moving a higher percentage of containers empty now than we ever have done before.”"}],[{"start":616.8,"text":"That means more expensive freight rates for Asian exports or shipping companies scrambling to find cargo to fill their ships."}],[{"start":623.32,"text":"“We are generally trying to find any containerised goods,” the executive says. Scrap paper for recycling, wine in huge plastic bags and even grains that would normally be shipped loose in dry-cargo ships have become critical backhaul trades."}],[{"start":637.4,"text":"Ports under strain"}],[{"start":638.96,"text":"At the start of this year, industry executives were warning that a long boom period that started with the Covid pandemic would come to an end thanks to an oversupply of ships, causing shipping rates to crash. It was a prophecy familiar to many who work in an industry vulnerable to cycles of feast and famine."}],[{"start":655.76,"text":"Instead, despite all the disruption to global trade from war, tariff regimes and climate change, bookings for container space keep growing."}],[{"start":664.16,"text":"Global container demand rose 5.2 per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2026 and Chinese exports rose 12.4 per cent, according to the maritime analytics company Xeneta, as companies diversified supply chains and rushed to increase inventories ahead of the introduction of more US tariffs in July."}],[{"start":682.88,"text":"“The trade tensions have certainly made the supply chain a lot more global in the sense that previously, people were more inclined to put more eggs in one basket, but now with everything that has happened we see clients trying to diversify their supply chains across more regions of the world,” Toft says."}],[{"start":699.16,"text":"There are a surprising number of goods and regions that have not yet joined the global container trade. One region attracting major interest is Africa. “If you get a population boom you need containerisation,” says Peter Sand, chief analyst at Xeneta."}],[{"start":713.2,"text":"Ten years ago, APM Terminals and others invested in port expansion projects in Ghana and another in Ivory Coast. “We thought that it would take a long time to fill them,” says Svendsen, APM’s chief executive. “But they were full almost immediately, which was surprising. As quickly as the industry can pour concrete, so to speak, we are building capacity [in Africa].”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":734.44,"text":"There are further efficiencies to be made if some of the commodities currently transported loose in bulk cargo ships, such as grain, were loaded in containers."}],[{"start":743.08,"text":"This year, around 2mn cars are expected to be carried on container ships rather than specialised car carriers. While this is mostly due to maxed-out capacity on car carriers, container shipping executives are eyeing it as another potential market."}],[{"start":756.78,"text":"But it is unclear how the world’s ports would handle even more containers in circulation."}],[{"start":761.24,"text":"London Gateway is one of the few European ports with the space to grow. The port processed 3.1mn containers last year and will expand by a further 2mn when DP World adds a second rail terminal and another two berths by 2030, up from four today. The only day that the 16 cranes stop lifting boxes is Christmas Day."}],[{"start":779.68,"text":"Charlie Uttley, who has operated the largest quay cranes for two years, works 12-hour shifts sitting in a glass box 60 metres above the berth with the containers swinging below him. His target is to move 24 containers every hour. Some of the work is being automated but that’s “less fun”, Uttley says."}],[{"start":799.4,"text":"The port is installing the world’s first automated stacking storage system for empty containers, able to hold 27,000 TEUs stacked 16 high. If the system works, it could allow space-constrained ports to finally increase capacity. “It has the potential to become really a game-changer to our industry,” says DP World’s chief executive of UK ports Kris Adams."}],[{"start":822.76,"text":"Looking out at the Ebba Maersk, which arrived from Shanghai the night before carrying around 11,000 containers, Adams says that the humble steel box has “very much changed the pace of globalisation”. But that pace may prove unsustainable. “Capacity is always an issue,” he adds. “It’s difficult to build a new port.”"}],[{"start":842.68,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1787539788_2344.mp3"}