Despite the increase in operational complexity, one foreseeable impact of foldable containers is that the availability of empty containers for exporters should logically improve, since carriers would find it cheaper to rebalance stocks of foldable containers between IPI locations, as represented in Leg F of Fig. 2.
The effect of foldable containers on the costs of container fleet management in liner shipping networks. Maritime Economics & Logistics. 2012. Vol. 14. No. 4. P. 455-479. DOI: 10.1057/mel.2012.16. Shintani, K. & Konings, R. & Imai, A. Combinable containers: A container innovation to save container fleet and empty container repositioning costs.
The purported benefits of foldable containers are numerous (if not yet proven). They are said to be able to not just reduce transportation costs, congestion and carbon footprint, but also alleviate space constraints at seaports (e.g. Konings and Thijs, 2001, Bandara et al., 2015 ).
Out of a total of about 5000 containers, an estimated fleet and critical mass of just 695 foldable containers are required for the inland network under study (and the rest of the containers being conventional ones), with a 71% load factor on the back haul.
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