Advantages and disadvantages of folding container exchange service quality

Why are foldable containers so expensive?

In the short term, the use of foldable containers is expensive because of the high costs involved in production and the operational costs of foldable containers compared with standard containers. This confirms the claim that the initial market price and the costs of folding and unfolding foldable containers are quite high (Konings and Thijs, 2001).

How will foldable containers affect exporters?

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.

Are foldable containers better than standard containers?

Although foldable containers have been introduced to overcome standard container issues, there are some disadvantages involved with them. However the benefits of foldable containers over standard ones cannot be underestimated when considering the escalating volume of empty containers and the costs involved in repositioning them.

Do foldable containers affect port operation?

The opinion of the survey respondents on the impact of foldable containers on port operation suggests that, despite the benefits accrued to ports from additional terminal capacity and time saved by not having to move empty containers, there may be issues in sorting foldable containers.