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Folding container on show
Monday 26 July 2010
STAXXON, an Ohio-based start-up, is inviting prospective clients and investors to a three-day demonstration in Edison, New Jersey, from tomorrow to Thursday, to see a prototype folding container.
This is a must-see, insists inventor and Staxxon founder George Kochanowski. The company’s idea is not to manufacture or sell folding containers, but to licence its recently patented folding know-how to container fleet owners and their usual container factories.
Staxxon’s patent can also be used to retrofit existing boxes. Sources suggested the one-time price for such a job, which can be carried out in a standard container manufacturing or repair facility, would be $2,500 per container.
The advantages, however, are manifold. Staxxon says its primary business target is to address the problem and cost of repositioning empties. Five folded containers take the space of one, and their unique configuration means that empties can go on the bottom.
This, in turn, would streamline load-unload and planning options, and lead to faster vessel turn times at terminals, without requiring major terminal design changes or equipment, and without interfering with road and rail workflow.
The New Jersey demonstration would use a “well-used” 20 ft container. Staxxon says it will begin a similar retrofit prototype of a 40 ft container next month.
The company simply wants users to come and see a box that folds like an accordion, so they can buy the licence and retrofit or manufacture their own folding containers at their own pace and in the facilities of their choice. Of course, anyone interested in pumping seed money into Staxxon is encouraged to stop by as well.
Costa watching the whales
LATEST effort by the cruise industry to prove its environmentally friendly credentials comes from Italian cruise line Costa Cruises, which is advancing two partnerships that it says “confirms its leadership in protection of the marine environment and the Mediterranean Sea”.
One link is with the World Wildlife Fund Repcet project to record and transmit reports of whale sightings. It is aimed at reducing the risk of whale strikes and plotting the movements of “these giant cetaceans”. The second partnership is more a mundane-sounding link with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre to monitor climate change in the Mediterranean.
Costa’s 144,500 gt cruiseship Costa Pacifica is taking part in the pilot Repcet project and will, in the operator’s words, become a “veritable environmental laboratory for the protection and study of whales and for monitoring climate change in the Mediterranean”.
There are unconfirmed rumours that these intelligent creatures are also monitoring the movements of giant cruiseships.
Yachtsman’s bank credit
HAVING completed the first solo circumnavigation of the globe, without assistance, in a 6.5 m yacht, Alessandro Di Benedetto expressed suitable thanks to his sponsor, Italian bank Findomestic, part of BNP Paribas.
In fact the yacht was named after the bank.
At one point during his 270-day, 28,365-mile voyage he had to rebuild the mast while off Cape Horn in 100 km per hour winds after it was badly damaged.
He expressed the routine thanks to all his supporters, including sponsor “Findomestic, who believed in me from the beginning”. Presumably he did not have to queue up at the Cape Horn branch for an advance. n
