When will container industry mature?

As warehouses are constantly expanded to accommodate growing volumes of cargo, commentators are starting to ask the interesting question of when the world container industry will “mature”. In short, when will the world have all the containers, vessels, and port facilities it needs. While the industry is presently in the doldrums, there is little doubt that it will recover as world trade rebounds. And it is world trade that will set the limits for containerisation. Commentators point out that containerisation is following the typical “S” curve of a product life-cycle. There was practically no investment up to the 1970s as containers were a rarity, with the impetus coming from the first container ships in the 1960s. Between 1970 and 1990 the freight industry “adopted” containers big time – with containerised traffic trebling to over 500 million TEUs between the 1990s and the early part of the new millennium. Containerisation is now at the point where it affects manufacturing strategies, and has helped fuel the economies of China and India. Containerisation has also moved inland, and is expected to face “technical” limits, where economies of scale begin to limit further expansion. The question no-one is brave enough to answer is just when this limit will be reached.