"Containerization cannot be considered just another means of transportation,” Besson told Congress in 1970. “The full benefits of containerization can only be derived from logistic systems designed with full use of containers in mind.” [...] These possibilities first drew notice in the early 1980s, when the world discovered just-in-time manufacturing.
[...] Containerization did not create geographical disadvantage, but it has arguably made it a more serious problem. [...] In 2004, the World Bank estimated that if Peru were as effective at port management as Australia, that alone would increase its foreign trade by one-quarter. The Peruvian government took that warning seriously, arranging $2 billion in port investments over the ensuing decade, which made possible a very large increase in foreign trade.
[...] The total capacity of pure containerships more than doubled between 2005 and 2015, [...] And ships themselves reached unprecedented size. In 2005, a ship able to carry 4,000 40-foot containers—8,000 TEUs—was considered unusually large. Ten years later, ships of 20,000 TEUs had joined the world’s fleet, ships so large that a single one could carry 144 million bottles of wine. Even larger ones were on order.
No comments:
Post a Comment