A CASE STUDY ON CONTAINERIZATION FOR A PULP MILL IN NORTHERN BC

by
Mark Robillard

PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
July 2010

© Mark Robillard, 2010

UNIVERSITY of NORTHERN
BRITISH COLUMBIA

UBAAAY

Prince George, B.C.

Table Of Contents
Table of contents .................. .. ...... ........................................................................... ... .ii
Table of figures .................................. .. ............. .. ........................................................... .iii
Glossary ................................................ ....................................................................... iv
1.0

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................... ..................... ........ 1

2.0

INTRODUCTION ........................ .. .......... ............. ....................................... ...... 2

3.0

LITERATURE REVIEW ................................... ................................................. 3

3.1

Breakbulk Cargo ........................................... ................................................... 3

3.2

Containers ........... .................................. ........................................................... 5

3.3

Economics of Containers ........... ...................................................................... 9

3.4

The Ports .......................... .... ..... ........................ ... ......................................... 11

3.5

Railroads and Power .................................................................................... 13

4.0

BACKGROUND ........... ................................................................................... 15

4.1

Shipment of Pulp ......................................................................................... 16

5.0

PROBLEM AND OBJECTIVE .......................................................................... 22

6.0

ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................... 34

7.0

CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................. 37

8.0

RECOMMENDATIONS .................................................................................. 40

9.0

WORKS CITED ........ ....................................................... ...... ......................... 42

10.0

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................. 44

ii

Table of Figures
Figure 1- ISO Container capacity ....................... ............ ........................................... 8
Figure 2 - ISO Container Exterior Dimensions ......................................................... 8
Figure 3- ISO Container Interior Dimensions .......................................................... 8
Figure 4- ISO Container Door Opening Dimensions ................................................ 8
Figure 5- Uncompressed Bales of Pulp .................................................................. 17
Figure 6- Compressed, Wrapped Bale of Pulp ...... .. .... .......................................... 18
Figure 7- Unitized Pulp ................................................................. ........................... 19
Figure 8- Multiple Units of Pulp Being Loaded Breakbulk ................................... 20
Figure 9- Breakbulk Pulp in the Hold of a Ship ..................................................... 21
Figure 10- Current Shipping Flowchart.. .............................................................. 23
Figure 11 - Proposed Shipping Flowchart.. ........................................................... 24
Figure 12- CN Rail Boxcar ....................................................................................... 25
Figure 13- Standard 20 Foot ISO Container ............................................................ 25
Figure 14- Standard 40 foot ISO Container ........................................................... 25
Figure 15- 20 foot Sea Container ........................................................................... 26
Figure 16- Gondola Car with Double Stacked Containers .................................... 27
Figure 17- Chart of Shipping Costs From Mackenzie to Container Facility ....... 35
Figure 18- Chart of Container Transport Costs To Shanghai.. ............................ .35
Figure 19- Total Freight Costs, Mackenzie to Shanghai.. ..................................... 35

iii

Glossary

3P

Public Private Partnership. Is a venture funded and operated though a
partnership of government and private industry.
Billet
A pallet like platform used to lift breakbulk cargo in and out of a ship's hold.
Breakbulk Cargo
General cargo that is handled piece by piece in a ships hold, not containerized or
intermodal.
FEU
A 40-foot ISO container, measuring (nominally 40 feet by 8 feet by 8 liz feet.
(Forty-Foot Equivalent Unit)
Gondola Car

A rail car specially designed to haul double-stacked shipping containers, with

the bottom of the body of the rail car below the top of car wheels, to reduce the
overall height of the container cargo. Also called a well car.

Just In Time
A strategy for inventory management in which raw materials and components
are delivered from the vendor or supplier immediately before they are needed
in the manufacturing process.
Kraft Pulp
Kraft pulp is what you get after you place a chip of wood in a pressurized vessel
in the presence of hot caustic soda and sodium sulfide. The cooking process
attacks and eventually dissolves the phenolic material called lignin that glues
the fibers to each other in the wood. The word "kraft" means "strong" in the
German language of its origin
NBSK
Northern Bleached Softwood Kraft pulp. Standard of pulp that is made from
coniferous trees growing north of the 45th parallel in North America, Europe
and Asia.
Pallet
A flat transport structure designed to hold freight items, to allow for easy
handling by forklifts and reduce damage to the item.

iv

Post Panamax Vessel
A ship that is too large to fit through the Panama Canal
Shipping Company
A steam ship or container ship line that hauls cargo by ocean.
TEU
A 20 foot ISO container, measuring (nominally) 20 feet by 8 feet by 8 Vz feet.
(Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit)
Unitized Pulp
A package of 8 bales of pulp, weighing approximately 1800 kg, held together
with wire, used to handle breakbulk pulp
Well Car
A rail car specially designed to haul double stacked shipping containers, with
the bottom of the body of the rail car below the top of car wheels, to reduce the
overall height of the container cargo. Also called a Gondola car.
Van
A 53' dry trailer, pulled by truck for hauling cargo.

v

1.0

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This document examines the state of containerization in Northern
British Columbia, specifically at Mackenzie Pulp Mill Corporation, describing
the current situation and examining the opportunities that containerization
could bring the mill and industry in the Central Interior.
Containerization has revolutionized cargo transportation and has
reduced the cost, time, and damage of every product shipped by container.
In September 2007, Prince Rupert opened a state of the art, 500,000
TEU container port facility. A 3P partnership that incorporates the latest
technology and container management systems, along with the largest cranes
on the West Coast, able to service the newest super post-Panamax vessels up
to 12,500 TEU. CN rail upgraded its rail lines from the port to Chicago and
Memphis, to allow seamless double tracked container transport on the least
congested rail line in North America. CN also built two inland container
terminals, one in Prince George and the second in Edmonton.
Despite the proximity to this transportation infrastructure, and 30% to
40% of the containers returning to Prince Rupert empty, industrial users such
as Mackenzie Pulp still rail their pulp in conventional boxcars to Vancouver for
stuffing into containers for shipping to Asia.
The reasons for the lack of container use are complex, but the outcome
is maintaining the status quo is the least expensive method of delivering

1

product to their customers and it will take further developments before
industry will be able to load containers in the North.
2.0

INTRODUCTION

Containerization has transformed the way products are moved around
the globe, and has been called the 3 rd industrial revolution (Stulman 1974),
owing to the way that it has transformed society. Despite the impact that
containers have had, there has been very little serious study of the container
and its consequences, except in the area of labour relations (Levinson 2008).
The purpose of this document is to examine the current use of containers in
Northern British Columbia using Mackenzie Pulp Mill Corporation's
experience, and then to investigate alternatives to circumvent the current
impasse of no containers being filled by industry in the Northern Interior of
British Columbia and take advantage of containerization for transportation of
pulp to Asia.
The document surveys the history of containerization, detailing the
physical and financial reasons for the success of containerization throughout
the world and extrapolates the benefits of containerization to the pulp mill's
current shipping practices. The document describes the current situation
regarding the shipment of pulp and assesses the opportunities that
containerized shipping from the mill site might provide.
The document then offers suggestions on how current practices could
be changed to allow industry in Northern British Columbia and Mackenzie

2

Pulp Mill specifically to take advantage of the benefits of shipping in
containers.
3.0

LITERATURE REVIEW

This literature review will survey the literature describing how
containerization works, starting with an examination of the history of
breakbulk cargo, containers and ports. It will then look at the economics of
containerization and the railroads role in moving containers.

3.1

Breakbulk Cargo
The history of containerization first starts with the history of shipping.

Before containerization, shipping a product had not changed since the time of
the Phoenicians (Donovan 2004). Manufacturing was typically an urban
enterprise, with factories clustered near the docks for ease of delivery of raw
materials and faster shipment of finished goods (Levinson 2008). The shipper
would load his goods piece by piece, all tagged for its destination, into a truck,
rail car or cart for delivery to a warehouse called a transit shed along side the
dock. Each piece was unloaded, tallied and stored in the transit shed. When
the ship was ready to load, each item was removed from the transit shed,
tallied, and placed beside the ship. Longshoremen would gather the cargo into
a draft, which is basically a pallet, often sitting on a net. Cables would be
positioned underneath the pallet and it would be hoisted into the ships hold.
Here the skilled longshoremen would pack the cargo into the hold of the ship,
assembling the cargo so that they maximized the space inside the ship and
ensured that everything was packed tightly, so that nothing could shift or

3

break during the voyage, endangering the ship or the other cargo (Talley
2000).
At the destination port, the procedure was reversed, with the
longshoremen picking through the jigsaw puzzle of the tightly packed cargo,
carrying each piece to a draft to be hoisted out of the hold. The cargo was then
spread out on the dock, to be inspected by customs, and then the buyer's
representatives. After duties were assessed and the goods were pronounced
to be undamaged, the tags were read, tallied and the products were sorted to
the transit shed. Here pieces were loaded on to a truck or train for delivery to
their next destination.
The process was slow and expensive. The ship could not start to be
loaded until all the cargo was unloaded. The average time that a cargo ship
spent in port was three weeks, which made for a very nice life for merchant
seamen and itinerant travellers, who could enjoy the time in a port
(Updegrove 2006). However for the owner of the ship this was very
expensive, with 60 to 75% of the cost of transporting cargo by ship being
spent on the dock. (Levinson 2008).
The high cost of shipping was a disincentive to ship products overseas,
so the world was full of small manufacturers shipping locally.
The cost of freight to sell internationally could be 25% of the cost of the
item. In the United States, international trade was a smaller percentage of the
economy in 1960 than it was in 1950 or even in the depression year of 1930,
because ofthe increasing cost of international freight. (Levinson 2008)

4

3.2

Containers

Breakbulk cargo was subject to theft from the dockworkers. In New

York, it was estimated that 3 0% of the whisky and coffee travelling through
the port disappeared through shrinkage (Donovan 2004). In an effort to
control theft, reduce handling, and improve efficiencies, various shippers tried
shipping their products in boxes. The French and English railways tried
wooden containers to move household furniture in the late nineteenth
century, using cranes to move the boxes from flatcars to horse carts. In 1929,
an American steamship operator, Seatrain Lines, operated specially built ships
holding railway boxcars in metal cells, lifting the cars on and off the ship with
dockside cranes. In 1949, Brown Industries of Spokane, Washington built 30foot aluminum boxes that could be stacked two high on barges operating
between Seattle and Alaska, or placed on a chassis and pulled by a truck.
(Levinson 2008). None of these containers were very successful, however, and
the shippers of the world struggled with expensive, slow deliveries and
shrinkage of high value products.
This started to change in 1955, when the owner of a trucking company,
Malcom McLean, realized that most shippers of cargo didn't care how a
product got to its destination; they just wanted it to get there (Postrel 2006).
The ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) controlled the shipping and
pricing of all shipping routes in the US and wouldn't let a trucking company
own a shipping company. McLean sold his trucking company and purchased a
US shipping company, Pan-Atlantic Steamship corporation, which in 1955,

5

operated 4 ships and had operating rights to 16 US east coast ports. Four
months later, he purchased Pan-Atlantic's parent company, Waterman
Steamship Corporation.
McLean's plan was to build 7 new, roll-on/roll-off ships that could carry
288 truck trailers each, but through his planning McLean realized that this
would be inefficient; the wheels beneath each trailer would waste a lot of
space. Without wheels he could gain a third more usable cargo space.
Without the wheels, however, there was no way to load and unload these
trailers, the trailers were not strong enough to be lifted and could not support
other trailers for stacking. McLean abandoned the building of the roll-on/rolloff ships and then decided instead to purchase some ex WW2 oil tankers and
convert the decks to hold containers. After experimenting with strengthening
road trailers, McLean instead decided to purchase two hundred, 33-foot
containers from Brown Industries who were building and using 30-foot
containers on their Seattle to Alaska route. McLean then hired Brown's chief
engineer Keith Tantlinger to figure out how to make the containers stackable
and secure. Tantlinger was successful in devising a corner clamp that would
support the container when being lifted and allow the container to be locked
to the containers below and above to secure the container during heavy seas.
With his engineering problems solved, McLean had to wait for both the ICC
and the Coast Guard to approve his plan. On April 26, 1956 he loaded 58
containers on his ship, the Ideal-X, in under 8 hours and transported them
from Newark New Jersey to Houston Texas for a loading cost of $0.158 per ton,

6

compared to a breakbulk rate of $5.83 per tonne (Levinson 2008). Malcolm
faced huge opposition from trucking companies, railroads and longshoremen,
all of who, at some point, refused to handle his containers and tried to disrupt
his shipping business, in order to protect their jobs and businesses. While
they caused him considerable grief along the way, they were ultimately
unsuccessful in stopping his container business.
On the Pacific Coast, Matson Navigation Company started shipping
24-foot, 8 Yz foot wide containers from San Francisco to Hawaii on August 31,
1958 on a ship with 20 containers on its deck. In May 1960, Matson began
sailing ships that held 408- 25 ton containers, including 72 refrigerated units,
all loaded and unloaded by purpose-built dock cranes capable of moving 400
tons per hour, more than 40 times the 10 tons per hour a longshoremen gang
could move (Levinson 2008). Matson's cranes unloaded and loaded ships at
the same time, by emptying one stack of containers then refilling the empty
space, utilizing the crane in both directions.
The next step in containerization was standardization in container size,
attachments and capacity. The United States Maritime Administration started
working on this in 1958, followed by the American Standards Association and
they decided by the summer of 1959 that the standard container would be 20
or 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 feet high. There was no company in the
United States using containers of that size, and it was a difficult process to get
industry to agree to those sizes. In 1961 the Maritime Administration
announced that 10', 20', 30' and 40' containers with 8'x8' width and height

7

were standard size containers. The International Standards Organization
(ISO) then became involved and started working on getting an international
standard for shipping containers. It took until 1970 for ISO to publish the
worldwide standards sizes for containers.

ISO STANDARD CONTAINER SPECIFICATIONS

Length
20 feet
40 feet
40ft HC
Figure 1
Length
20 feet
40 feet
40ft. HC
Figure 2
Length
20 feet
40 feet
40ft HC
Figure 3

ISO Container Capacity
Cubic Capacity
Tare Weight

1165 cubic feet
2350 cubic feet
2 694 cubic feet

5050 lbs.
8000 lbs.
8775lbs.

Max Gross
Weight
67,200 lbs.
71,650 lbs.
71,650 lbs.

ISO Container Dimension - Exterior
Exterior Length
Exterior Width
19' 10"
8'
40'
8'
40'
8'

Exterior Height
8'6"
8'6"
9'6"

ISO Container Dimensions - Interior
Interior Length
Interior Width
19' 3"
7' 8"
39' 5"
7' 8"
39' 5"
7' 8"

Interior Height
7' 9.875"
7' 9.875"
8'10"

ISO Container Dimensions - Door Opening
Length
Width
Height
7' 8"
20 feet
7' 5"
7' 8"
7' 5"
40 feet
7' 8"
7' 5"
40ft HC
Figure 4

(W&K Container n.d.)

8

3.3

Economics of Containers
As Malcom McLean had envisioned, shippers only cared about the

delivered cost of their products. They didn't care about loading efficiencies.
However in the 1950's in the United States, the ICC (Interstate Commerce
Commission) regulated the rates and routes of trains and trucks with a
mandate to preserve essential transportation services, prevent destructive
competition and to promote efficiency and modernization (Donovan 2004).
The ICC introduced the Transportation Act of 1958, being directed by
Congress not to keep any carrier's rates high just to protect another mode of
transportation, but also to block unfair or destructive competition. The act
allowed the railroads to competitively haul"piggyback" truck trailer loads,
which was a semi trailer on a flat deck rail car. This was typically competitive
on distances greater than 500 miles, which was the most a driver could travel
in one day. Manufacturers were quick to learn that they could save money by
filling trailers and shipping them by rail, which would prepare them for
eventual container loading. Piggyback transportation generated new profits
for the railroads and resulted in the railroads actively discouraging container
movement by train, rationalizing that containers would reduce boxcar or
piggyback traffic. European railroads, however, embraced the fledgling
container market, offering flat rate transportation of containers as soon as
they arrived in Europe (Levinson 2008). In the United States, this lack of rail

9

interest continued until the June 1970 bankruptcy of Penn Central, the largest
railroad in the US, followed by 6 more rail bankruptcies. This required
government intervention and highlighted the regulations that the ICC had in
place that prevented the railroads and the trucking companies from being
exposed to free market competition. In 1980 Congress removed the rules on
interstate trucking, removed ICC from approving rail rates, and removed the
rule that all rail customers should pay the same rates. By 1988 US shippers
were paying almost 20% less for domestic freight. Where it had cost 4 cents to
move 1 ton of containerized freight in 1982, rates dropped by 40% (before
inflation) by 1988. The next step was the US Shipping Act of 1984 for
maritime shippers, which allowed shippers and carriers to negotiate rates.
The US Military's rate for containerized cargo in October 1979 went from
$40.94 per 40 cubic feet either way across the Pacific to $2.30 Westbound and
$15.89 Eastbound by 1986. This price reduction was on top of an inflation rate

of about 30% during the same time period (Levinson 2008), which was an
inflation adjusted decrease of $44.13 or 83%.
Today there are more than 77 container shipping companies, with a
capacity of 13,108,589 TEU carried on 6,048 ships in the worldwide container
business. The largest company APM Maersk has a capacity of 2,031886 TEU,
with 539 ships, and 15.5% of the market (Konrad 2009).

10

3.4

The Ports
As containerization reduced the cost of transportation to 1 to 2% of the

cost of the goods (Donovan 2004), most of the initial savings came from the
ports. Since 1960 the number of longshoremen employed declined by 95%
(Donovan 2004) as containers and cranes removed the need for the
longshoremen to directly handle the cargo. Containers were stuffed and
emptied away from the port, again removing the need for longshoremen. One
benefit of these changes was that longshoremen were now working scheduled
hours and no longer needed to be at the pier in the morning to hope for work,
so they moved to the suburbs, away from the waterfront (Levinson 2008).
With the workers moving away and manufacturing no longer required to be
near the shipping point, the neighbourhoods surrounding the harbor became
ghettos, resulting in unemployment and poverty rates significantly higher in
port districts than the metropolitan areas that surround them. (Grobar 2008).
Since port districts pay the social and political price for increased trade,
without reaping any of the benefits , those living in the port districts have
typically opposed any expansion of the port, and this has limited growth in
trade (Grobar 2008). For governments in North America this is a continual
political issue to be resolved.
As the rapid growth of containerization has devastated port workers, it

11

has also devastated some of the ports as well. When containerization arrived,
if the port wasn't ready to handle containers, the shipping companies moved
to ports that were. San Francisco's traffic moved to Oakland. London and
Liverpool were England's biggest ports in the early 1960's, with half of the
country's trade. The ports and the unions weren't ready to accept
containerization, so the shipping companies moved to Felixstowe, a private
port owned by the Felizstowe Railway and Dock Company, 90 miles north of
London. By 1968 Felixstowe was England's largest container port, and
London lost to Rotterdam its distinction as Europe's maritime center
(Levinson 2008).
At this time, container ships are growing larger with each generation as
operators exploit economies of scale (Cullinane and Khanna 1999). The
container companies are embracing pendulum routes with a hub and spoke
operation at each end (Medda and Carbonaro 2007). This model, similar to
that of airlines, maximizes the ocean-going time of the largest containerships
and minimizes port time. The issue for ports is that they need to have the
depth, speed, handling costs, reliability and hinterland connections
(Wiegmans, VanDer Hoest and Notteboom 2008) to handle these increasingly
larger ships economically. The issue for policy makers is funding these
capitally expensive ventures without any guarantee that the shipping lines will
come. The ports have become pawns in the global transportation industry
12

(Talley 2000), with shipping companies moving on a whim to the next location
that has less overall cost. To accommodate increasingly larger ships or just to
keep up with the competition, ports must constantly invest large sums of
capital, with no guarantee that the shippers won't move to the next port that
offers them a better deal. One solution that is growing in popularity is leasing
the ports to private operators. The operators who lease the terminals and pay
for port equipment often have better access to capital and can spread the cost
over many operations. They also don't overinvest in the hopes of spurring
local development (Postrel 2006). Prince Rupert's Fairview Terminal is an
example of a private operator investing capital to operate a container port
(Western Economic Diversification 2007).

3.5

Railroads and Power
Railroads in North America have had a long history of resisting change

in order to preserve the status quo. In 1966 Malcolm McLean wanted his sales
people to find manufacturers in the Midwest who were exporting to Europe
and have them consolidate their products in containers that McLean would
truck in to freight yards in Chicago and St Louis. There, they would be double
stacked on rail cars that McLean would purchase for special trains that would
transport the containers to McLean's dock in New Jersey. Shipper's costs for
the domestic portion of the trip to Europe would fall by half, and customers

13

would know when their product would arrive. The railroads responded with
the minimum offer that the ICC would allow: they would take the containers
but they would be mixed in with other cars on their regular slow freight trains.
In 1967 Whirlpool Corporation asked New York Central Railroad to
move containers of refrigerators to New Jersey. The railroad responded by
telling Whirlpool to ship them in boxcars and stuff them into containers at the
port. Whirlpool containerized them and shipped them by truck (all from
Levinson, 2008).
While most railroads now haul containers, the railroads are still
unfriendly to container companies. In her 2003 study, Lopez reported that
unlike trucking companies, railroads won't haul empty containers on a spot
basis; the empty containers need to be part of a minimum one year contract.
This contract is for a specific capacity, based on the previous years
movements. If a shipper has a record of increasing volume every year, then
the railroad will increase the capacity in the new contract. The shipper pays
for capacity even if they don't use it. If a shipper uses more capacity than
booked, they pay a premium for the extra capacity. Because the railroad has a
monopoly, they don't need to negotiate, but will dictate to the shipper what
the terms will be (Lopez 2003).
As container traffic grows, railroads will become increasingly

14

dependent on container traffic for their profits. This dependancy should allow
the container companies to exert more influence over the railroads concerning
freight rates and transit times.
4.0

BACKGROUND

Before containerization, a manufacturer would produce its product, tag
it for the destination and then would pay to have it shipped by truck, rail or
cart to a warehouse at the port. After unloading at the warehouse, the
quantity and destination would be recorded and it would be stored in the
warehouse. When the ship was ready to load, the products would be moved to
the dock, tallied again, and placed on billets (basically a pallet, often sitting on
a net) and hoisted into the ship. The billets would then be unloaded into the
hold. While forklifts would be used on larger items on bigger ships, raw
muscle by the longshoremen was used extensively. The hold needed to be
packed tightly, both to maximize space, but primarily to ensure that no cargo
would shift while at sea, which could damage other cargo or even jeopardize
the ship. On arrival at the destination port, the procedure would be reversed,
with billets lowered into the hold of the ship, and the goods loaded onto them
and then winched out to be placed on the pier. Inspections would take place,
both for customs and by the owner's representatives to check for damage. The
product would then be put into the warehouse. This labour intensive process
of loading and unloading the ships could take days or weeks, depending on the
size of the ship and the productivity of the longshoremen.

15

Depending on the volume, the product could be shipped directly to the
customer, or the product would be consolidated for shipment by truck or train
to a regional warehouse, where it would be unloaded and then reloaded onto a
truck for final delivery to the customer.
This was an expensive process, with each handling of the product
taking time and creating an opportunity for theft and damage, which for high
value products (like alcohol) could be 30% of the product.l As well, each time
the product was put into a warehouse, it could spend days to weeks sitting,
waiting for the next leg of the journey. The producer of the product would
need to arrange for the shipment to the port, the shipment across the ocean,
the customs at the port, delivery to the regional warehouse and the final
delivery to the purchaser, which could involve five different weigh bills. The
producer would be responsible for payments for shipping to five different
companies, plus custom brokerage and duty, often all in advance.
4.1

Shipment of Pulp
Because of the volume of pulp shipped, manufacturers have devised

ways to make the transportation of pulp more efficient than traditional
breakbulk. When pulp is produced it comes out of a dryer in a wide
continuous layer. The layer is slit into sections and the sections are cut into
sheets. The sheets are then stacked into bales. Each bale of pulp weighs about
200 kg.

1

(Donovan 2004)

16

Pulp on the bale scale at Mackenzie Pulp. The weight is in kilos, the bale of
pulp has not been be compressed at this point.

Figure 5
Photo by Mark Robillard

17

The bales are compressed to reduce volume for shipping and then wrapped
with a sheet of pulp. Zinc-covered carbon steel wire is used to hold the bale
together.

Figure 6
Photo by Mark Robillard

18

The bales are then stacked 4 high and two stacks are wired together in a unit.
This unitized pulp is transported to a port for breakbulk or container loading.

Figure 14
Photo by Mark Robillard

19

At the port, special lifting mechanisms are used to lift multiple units of
pulp into the hold of a breakbulk ship. This process has increased the
efficiency of loading breakbulk pulp.

Figure 8
Photo by Dick Lund.
http://dlund.20m.com/ZMarMen01.html

20

The breakbulk pulp is loaded tightly into the hold of a ship for transportation.
As with all breakbulk it is important to ensure that the cargo does not shift or
move during the sea voyage.

Figure 9
Photo from UK P&I Club
http://www. ukpandi.com /loss-prevention I cargo-stowage-advice I cargophoto-library/general-cargo /wood -pulp-bales I
Unitized breakbulk pulp is typically sent to Europe. Most Asian paper
mills receive their pulp in containers. The typical mill in the Central Interior
unitizes their pulp and sends it to Vancouver in a boxcar where it is either
stuffed into a container or loaded breakbulk.

21

5.0

PROBLEM AND OBJECTIVE

Mackenzie Pulp is a small kraft pulp mill, producing about 240,000
tonnes of pulp per year. The Mackenzie mill historically shipped most of its
pulp production by rail to the North American paper and tissue market. As
Latin American and Asian paper makers built newer, faster and bigger paper
and tissue machines over the past two decades, they have put pressure on
North American paper and tissue makers to become more efficient. The North
American industry was not entirely successful in its ability to respond to the
pressure, and paper and tissue mills began to close in response to these less
expensive imports.
As a result, Mackenzie Pulp had to find other customers for its pulp, and

gradually shipped more product to Asia and Europe. At the time of the mill
closing in 2008, the mill shipped 40% of its product to Asia, 40% to North
America and the remaining 20% to Europe.
In 2010 Paper Excellence BV, a wholly owned subsidiary of APP, Asia
Pulp and Paper, purchased Mackenzie Pulp out of bankruptcy. Privately held
APP is the third largest pulp and paper company in the word, with a stated
goal of becoming the world's largest pulp and paper company. APP is part of a
larger family-held company called Sinarmas, based in Indonesia, with interests
in industrial agriculture, banking, insurance, education, mining and
manufacturing.
Mackenzie pulp was purchased specifically to provide its very high
quality NBSK (northern bleached softwood kraft) as raw material to APP's

22

paper and tissue machines in Asia. All of Mackenzie Pulp's production is sent
to Asia.
The pulp is loaded into CN boxcars and railed to Vancouver, where it is
unloaded, put into a warehouse, and then reloaded into containers for
shipment to Asia. The efficiency of this process could be improved by looking
at the feasibility of loading pulp into containers in Mackenzie for shipment to
Asia.

Current process of shipping pulp at Mackenzie Pulp

Figure 10

23

Proposed process for shipping pulp from Mackenzie Pulp

Figure 11
Boxcars are rectangular shaped rail cars, with double doors on each
side, which hold about 88 tonnes of pulp. Pulp mills prefer vented rail cars,
which are cars with air vents located on the topsides of the cars that increase
the airflow through the car. Without side vents, condensation from moisture
evaporating off warm pulp collects on the roof of the railcar and drips back
onto the pulp in cold weather. The pulp absorbs this water and expands. This
expansion destroys the integrity of the bale of pulp and increases the difficulty
for the customer to unload the pulp. CN currently provides about 40% of the
supplied cars as vented cars.

24

CN Boxcar

Figure 12
http: //www.flickr.com/photos /86812298@NOO /4933177 63
by Kumar McMillan

Containers come in a variety of standard sizes and include vented boxes
for pulp. The two most common sizes in North America are:

Standard 20 foot ISO Container
Door
Inside Inside Inside
length width height
width
19'4" 7' 8"
7' 8"
7' 10"
5.9 M 2.35M 2.393M 2.342M
Figure 13
Standard 40 foot ISO Container
Inside
Door
Inside Inside
length
width
width height
7' 8"
39' 5"
7' 8"
7' 10"
12.036M 2.35M 2.393M 2.342M
Figure 14

Door
height
7' 6"
2.28M

Door
height
7' 6"
2.28M

Capacity
1172 ft3
33.2M3

Capacity
2390 ft3
33.2M3

Tare
weight
5071lb.
2300 kg

Tare
weight
8,267lb.
3750 kg

Maximum
weight
67,197lb.
30,480kg

Maximum
cargo
71,650 lb.
32,500 kg

2

2 (Ahn n.d.)

25

20-foot sea container- 1 TEU

Figure 15
Photo from Outspan.us
http://www.mcssl.com/store/1895384/catalog/product/7d1ced56c9ee4a27
9ecaf423d7309108
The 40-foot containers are gaining in popularity with shippers, as they
require half of the ship loading time of a 20-foot container. However with
heavy commodities such as pulp, 20-foot containers are used, as the maximum
payload of a 20-foot container is 28,180 kg and the maximum payload of a 40foot container is 28,750 kg and a 20-foot container reaches its maximum
weight before it fills its volume. 3
CN has a monopoly on all rail movement in the Northern Interior of
British Columbia; moving pulp by boxcars or in containers by rail has to be
done by CN. CN does not own any containers and currently its fleet of double
gondola cars is only allocated for East-West Traffic, specifically between
3

(Ahn n.d.)
26

Prince Rupert or Vancouver and Eastern Canada or the Chicago Memphis area
of the United States.
Gondola car hauling double stacked 53-foot containers

Figure 16
Photo Sean Lamb
http: II commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /User:Slambo I Gallery
Containerization has changed the shipping and logistics world, allowing
worldwide commerce to develop and flourish. 4 It has decoupled the need for
an exporter to be near a port to reduce freight costs. 5
When a container is ordered, the shipping company can give a delivery
date describing when the container will be delivered. The shipping company
4 (Gooley 1997)
s (Postrel 2006)

27

looks after all of the freight and logistics. The container's contents, bills of
lading and customs paperwork are all tracked electronically, allowing shippers
to know the location of the container at any moment in time. Typically
customs clearance is done before the ship arrives at port, allowing for more
rapid movement away from the port. 6
Shipping companies arrange for the shipping of containers with the
railroads.? Because of shipping companies' railcar volumes, they can purchase
transport less expensively than an individual shipper such as a pulp mill, or
even a group of pulp mills. The shipping companies prefer secure long-term
transport arrangements, to reduce the risk of disruption of container
movement. 8
In 1956 before containerization, loose cargo cost $5.86 9 per ton
to load. Using an ISO container, this cost was reduced to 16¢ per ton for
loading. The total cost of containerized shipping including ground shipping,
loading, unloading and the ocean voyage typically costs 1% to 2% of the retail
cost of the product, 90% less than before containerization using breakbulk.lD
With containerization, the manufacturers' product arrives at their
customers in weeks, exactly as it left the factory. 11 Prior to containerization,
the delivery would take months, and the multiple handling and storage would
result in shrinkage and damage.
6 (Levinson 2008)

7 (Lopez 2003)
8 (IBED)

9 (Levinson 2008)

10 (Donovan 2004)

11

(Talley 2000)

28

Containerization has changed the way the world does business.
Containers have allowed Walmart to become the behemoth of retailing, by
reducing delivery time, cost and shrinkage. The United States Military first
started using containers during the Vietnam War 12 and containers have been
an essential component of mobilization and supply since then. On a personal
level, containers have allowed North American consumers to have 4 times the
product choice they had in the 70's and, for example, allow you to buy beer or
wine from anywhere in the world at your local liquor store with the
transportation portion of the cost only a few cents per bottle.1 3
Containerization has taken billions of dollars of inventory out of the
supply chain and the rapid, traceable and predictable delivery has allowed just
in time manufacturing to flourish. Toyota's manufacturing plant in Kentucky,
for example, uses just in time inventory management to build cars in an area
hundreds of miles from other car manufacturing and suppliers.
Containerization has changed the economics of ports through three
different aspects. The container movement business is highly competitive,
with shipping lines moving quickly to utilize the most efficient and least
expensive ports and carriers. Thus a city like Everett, Washington, which lost
its major container carrier, is now an underutilized port, looking for new
customers. 14

12 (Levinson 2008)

13 (Donovan 2004)
14 (Gillie 2010)

29

The second result of containerization is that port cities, which used to
be hubs of commercial activity, supported by the loading and unloading of
break bulk cargo, and surrounded by manufacturing and warehouses, are now
in commercial decline, as containers and their cargo quickly and safely leave
and arrive at the ports on the way to and from the final destination. Up to 95%
of the longshoremen jobs have disappeared in ports that have shifted from
bulk cargo to container, creating economic ghettos in the areas surrounding
the docks.ts
The third change is that proximity to a port is less important than at
any time in history. The need to be located near a port has been eliminated,
leading to regional socio-economic growth. Shipping costs have declined, so
other pure economic issues determine the location ofproducers. 16 Ports have
now become just another link in a flexible supply chain 17, where every link is
continually monitored for cost and efficiency and the weak link replaced as
required.
The Canadian and British Columbia governments, along with the
autonomous Prince Rupert Port Authority, privately owned Maher Terminals
and CN Rail have developed a container port facility in Prince Rupert. Opened
on Sept 12, 2007 the state of the art terminal boasts some of the largest cranes
on the West Coast to service the newest super Post-Panamax vessels that can
carry up to 12,500 TEUs (20 foot equivalent units). The port can currently
15 (Grobar 2008)
16 (Slack 1993)

17 (Donovan 2004)

30

handle 500,000 TEUs per year with plans in place to increase the capacity to 2
million TEUs per year. CN rail double tracked portions of their rail line and
increased the length of the sidings from Prince Rupert to Memphis, enlarging
all their tunnels and bridges to allow double stacked containers, to facilitate 4
million TEU capacity. CN worked with Maher Terminals on the design of the
rail terminal to allow the most efficient movement of containers into and away
from the port. 18
The Prince Rupert port is the deepest natural harbor, with capacity to
expand, on the west coast. The port is one day closer to Asia than Vancouver
and Seattle and 3 days closer to Asia than Los Angeles.19
CN's rail line delivers rail containers to Chicago from Prince Rupert in
96 hours. The rail line is viewed as the fastest and least congested in North

America. To support the container traffic, CN has built two inland container
terminals, in Prince George and in Edmonton. As of March 2010, 30% to 40%
of the containers returning to Prince Rupert contained cargo; the rest were
empty.zo
It is clear that the interior of British Columbia is set up to take
advantage of containerization, with a new underutilized port, a state of the art
railroad running past our operations, and empty containers returning to
Prince Rupert.

1s (Western Economic Diversification 2007)
19 (Western Economic Diversification 2007)
20 (IBED)

31

However, there are no industries in the central interior that are taking
advantage of containerization to any degree. The author's tour of CN's Prince
George inland container terminal in August 2010 showed an empty
warehouse, with no cargo in the warehouse to be loaded into containers. The
operator of the warehouse said that Can for was loading 6 containers of pulp
per day and shipping the containers through Prince Rupert. This would
represent about 120 tonnes of pulp, which is estimated to be less than 5% of
their daily pulp production. The positive economic benefits of
containerization are not being realized in the central interior.
It is less expensive for an interior mill to load its pulp into boxcars, send
the box cars to Vancouver, have the box car unloaded into a warehouse, have
the pulp loaded from the warehouse into the containers and then have the
containers trucked to the dock for loading than it is for the mill to load a
container and send the container to Prince Rupert.
There are three primary reasons for this paradox. The first is that
because of competition from multiple container companies in Vancouver, it is
less expensive for a shipper to load a container on a ship in Vancouver and
have it travel to Prince Rupert and then on to Asia then it is to load the same
container in Prince Rupert.
The second is because companies that are shipping into Prince Rupert
have not been interested in releasing containers to pulp mills for shipping pulp

32

through Prince Rupert as this would delay the return of their empties to
Asia. 21
The third reason is that currently CN does not appear to want to
disturb the status quo and allow gondola cars to travel on a North-South route.
They would prefer to continue to move pulp to Vancouver in boxcars for
container loading, collecting the freight charges from each shipper, rather than
to haul containerized pulp to Prince Rupert and be paid by the shipping
companies. It is the author's belief that industrial users pay a higher freight
rate than container shipping companies.
The objective of this paper is to examine the current use of containers
in Northern British Columbia using Mackenzie Pulp Mill Corporation's
experience, and then to investigate alternatives to circumvent the current
impasse of no containers being filled by industry in the Northern Interior of
British Columbia and take advantage of containerization for transportation of
pulp to Asia.
The data for this project was acquired from Mackenzie Pulp's internal
financial data, bids for pulp movement from CN Rail and CN Worldwide, bids
and quotes for movement of pulp from container steamship lines and from
other industry sources, both inside and outside of Paper Excellence.

21 (Ryan 2010)

33

6.0

ANALYSIS

As a general rule, trucking is less expensive than rail for hauls less than
500 km. 22 As a shipper, it is easy to calculate a trucker's actual costs by
combining the wages, fuel, depreciation and profit margins, ensuring trucking
companies' rates are easily auditable. In addition, trucking in North America is
highly competitive, with low cost of entry and exit, resulting in bids for freight
movement by truck from multiple companies being very competitive and very
close in price. Rail, on the other hand, does not disclose its costs and at times
will offer service below their stated tariff to compete with trucking on shorter
hauls, if they decide they want the business.
Mackenzie Pulp Mill spends $34.07 per tonne to rail our pulp to
Vancouver. In Vancouver it costs $18 per tonne to unload the railcar and stuff
the container, and another $16 per tonne to truck the container from the
warehouse to the port, so the total cost from Mackenzie to the port is $68.07
per tonne of pulp (data from Mackenzie Pulp financial statements).
If Mackenzie Pulp were able to rail containers to the port in Vancouver,
the mill should save $34 per tonne, the cost of stuffing the container and
transporting it to the port. However CN will not release gondola cars for
North-South traffic. This leaves CN transporting containers to Prince Rupert
as the only option.
China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (Cos co) is the major shipping
company in Prince Rupert. Cosco's container ships arrive in Prince Rupert,
22 (Levinson 2008)

34

are partially unloaded and they then travel south to Vancouver and then to
Portland, before turning north again to load in Prince Rupert. Casco's price for
shipping pulp to Shanghai from Prince Rupert is $70.73 per tonne and from
Vancouver it is $70 per tonne (data from Casco bids for moving pulp). This
results in a saving of 73 cents per tonne or $18.25 per container to ship from
Vancouver instead of from Prince Rupert. This is in spite of the fact that Cos co
will haul the containers from Vancouver to Prince Rupert, before it heads East
to Asia.
Unfortunately CN can't give a price to an individual for shipping
containers to Prince Rupert; the railroads deal directly with the shipping
companies for container shipping. Obtaining a price for shipping from Prince
George to Prince Rupert requires a quote from a shipping company. At the
present time, the shipping companies are not interested in giving a quote for
containers to Mackenzie, so the quote was from Prince George to Shanghai.
The quote was $114.24 per tonne (from Casco), which combined with the cost
of freight to Prince George and stuffing the container was $6.70 to $12.17
more expensive than the current routing, depending on how the pulp was
shipped from Mackenzie to CN's inland freight terminal in Prince George.

35

Shipping Pulp From Mackenzie to a Container Stuffing Facility
Prince
George by
Van
$27.00
$9.00

Mackenzie to:
Container
Stuffing
Container Transport to Port
Figure 17

Prince George
by Container
$25.25

Prince
George by CN
Boxcar
$21.53
$9.00

Vancouver by
CN Boxcar
$34.07
$18.00
$16.00

Container Transport to Port and Ocean Travel
Vancouver to Shanghai
Prince Rupert to Shanghai
Prince George to Shanghai
Figure 18

$70.00
$70.73
$114.24

Total Freight Cost for Pulp from Mackenzie To Shanghai Via:
Prince George by
Van, Container
Through to Prince
Rupert By CN
$150.24
Figure 19

Prince George by
Truck Container,
Through to
Prince Rupert By
CN
$139.49

Prince George by
CN Boxcar,
Container
Through to
Prince Rupert
$144.77

Vancouver by
Boxcar, Container
Trucked to Port
in Vancouver
$138.07

All freight amounts given are from the summer of 2010. Shipping rates
change on a constant basis depending on volume, competition, the state of the
economy, the price of oil, and a host of other smaller variables. While the
freight numbers are out of date, the differences between competing rates will
remain the same, allowing for a reliable comparison of the options.
Canfor is currently shipping 6 containers per day out of Prince George
to Prince Rupert. This is less than 5% of their production, which would lead to
the inference that they have not found a better freight solution than Mackenzie
Pulp has and are loading containers as a risk mitigation strategy.

36

7.0

CONCLUSION

Despite the examples in the literature of companies saving large
amounts of money and time using containers, this opportunity has not
presented itself in Northern British Columbia. The primary reasons for this
are that CN will not allocate any container carriers to any routes other than the
East- West Prince Rupert to Chicago haul (personal conversation with a CN
sales representative, April2010),1 and the shipping companies do not want to
trouble themselves with the issue of delivering empty containers to any site off
the East-West mainline. "Many Canadian export products require extended
free detention time at destination - in some cases up to 21 Days. From a
carrier's perspective, it is better to forgo the export revenue if your equipment
will be tied up for extended periods in the market where you need the empties
the most. Better to ship empty and supply the containers to the export
demand in China".23
There are a number of opportunities that would allow Mackenzie Pulp
to access containers and the ability to ship though Prince Rupert.
The first way to accomplish this would be to leverage APP's global
volume of shipping. APP is the world's third largest pulp and paper company.
They are part of the Sinarmas group of companies that include agribusiness,
mining, insurance, banking and education. APP is investigating consolidating
its shipping to one company. Currently APP sources bids for each of its
shipments individually. If APP were to consolidate their shipping to one
23 (Ryan 2010)

37

provider, the volume should ensure that individual mills like Mackenzie would
be able to have a shipping company interested in serving them. This would
obligate the shipping company to provide containers to the mill sites at a
competitive rate. This is being worked on, but is not progressing with any
rapidity.
The second opportunity to access containers and ship from Prince
Rupert is to wait until more of the North American market realizes that the
Port of Prince Rupert and CN rail service between Prince Rupert to Chicago is
fast and uncongested and it will be more economical to ship along this faster
route. This increased traffic will attract other container ship lines. This
increased competition for the container traffic should lead to increased
competition for a pulp and lumber backhaul to Asia and should provide the
first opportunity to ship commodities from the Central interior to Asia.
As the North American economy continues to rebound, the demand for
products manufactured in Asia should increase the flow of containers from
Asia to North America. Given the congestion in the West Coast ports of the
United States this should mean that Prince Rupert will see more container
traffic, which will increase the flow of empty containers past the mills in
Northern BC, and provide access to containers.
Another scenario that could develop is that even if the traffic in Prince
Rupert does not increase, the shipping lines could route more empties to be
stored in Prince Rupert, to fill up the container ships returning to Asia on their
last stop, to ensure that no paying cargo is displaced on earlier stops of the

38

ship. With enough of a buffer in Prince Rupert, returning empties could be
made available to manufacturers in the North, allowing filled containers to
progress through Prince Rupert.
The nine pulp mills in Northern British Columbia and the 6 pulp mills in
Northern Alberta could form a consortium to consolidate their shipping to
Asia. This could take advantage of the growing hub and spoke practice of the
shipping companies, and there could be a single location in Asia where all
North American pulp would ship to and then be distributed from. Given the
competitive nature of the pulp industry, especially when pulp cycles through a
low price cycle, continued cooperation would be difficult.
The growing demand for lumber in China, increasingly being supplied
by Central Interior sawmills, could develop the container market for shipping
lumber to China. The lumber by itself, or combined with the pulp shipments
going to China, could be enough to attract a shipping company to make
containers available to the interior.
The increasing population in the lower mainland of Vancouver could
put increased pressure on CN becoming interested in hauling pulp through
Prince Rupert rather than Vancouver. This could result from increased line
congestion through Vancouver increasing the travel time through Vancouver
and CN and it's customers looking to decrease the transit times. This
disruption could force CN to make its northern line and the inland container
terminal in Prince George more competitive as CN gives up on maintaining its
boxcar traffic.

39

The second opportunity in this scenario would be political pressure
from the residents of Vancouver to reduce pollution, noise and traffic
congestion from both the trains and ships in the harbor. This pressure could
influence the shipping lines and CN to divert more shipping to Prince Rupert.
This would increase the pulp that move through Prince Rupert.
The last opportunity would be some other disruptive technology that
would change the way that containerization works in Northern BC. The
history of containers has been that no one has been able to predict what the
next stage of containerization will be, or the direction that the market will
take. It would not be unreasonable for some new development to change the
way the business operates and make containers available for the Northern
Interior.
8.0

RECOMMENDATIONS
It is inevitable that industry will have complete access to containers in

the north. Throughout the history of containers there have been many
attempts by self-serving groups to limit the access or growth in the movement
of containers, but inexorably the most efficient way of doing business will win.
However Mackenzie Pulp should continue to pressure their parent
company APP to develop a worldwide supply agreement with a single
container company. This will give us first mover advantage in pulp shipments
through Prince Rupert. When we start to move pulp through Prince Rupert,
we should save, at a minimum, the difference of the costs of container stuffing
and transportation to port in Vancouver, which is $25 per tonne or $5.87

40

million per year. In addition, there should be freight savings available from
the container shipping companies' ability to purchase freight from CN better
than the pulp mill can.
In the longer term as the traffic and competition increases in Prince
Rupert, the rates from Prince Rupert to Asia should decrease to reflect the
shorter sailing distance and time. Availability of containers should result in
higher traffic, increasing the opportunity for industry in the Central Interior to
affordably assess containers for their shipments to Asia.

41

9.0

Works Cited

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Bibliography

Updegrove, Andrew. Thinking About Standards Inside of the Box.
Consortiumlnfo.org. May 24, 2006.
Http: fwww.consortiuminfo.org/blog/ considerthis.php ?ct=3 9 (accessed
February 12, 2011).
Zan, Yang. "Analysis of container port policy by the reaction of an equilibrium
shipping market." Maritime Policy & Management, 1999: 369-381.
W&K Container. Oceancontainer.com. http:joceancontainer.comjspecs.html
(accessed March 9, 2011).
Watson, Rip. "Communication Gap Fuels a lack of understanding on intermodal
needs." journal of Commerce and Commercial, April 22, 1994: 2b.
Western Economic Diversification. "Prince Rupert Container Terminal
Opening New World of Opportunities." News Release, 2007, 7.
Wiegmans, Bart W., Anthony VanDer Hoest, and Thea E. Notteboom. "Port and
Terminal selection by deep-sea container operators." Maratime Policy &
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(accessed March 19, 2011).

Business Monitor International Inc. China Shipping Report Q4 2110. Business
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Cullinane, Kevin, and Mahim Khanna. "Economies of Scale in Large Container
Ships." journal of Transport Economics and Policy, May 1999: 185 - 207.
Celule. Http:/jwww.celulec.com. http:/ jwww.celulec.com/fibrescelulosiquies.html.
Cochran, Jeffery K., and Balaji Ramanujam. "Carrier-mode logistics
optimization of inbound supply chains for electronics manufacturing."
Internationaljournal of Production Economics, 2006:826-840.
44

Donovan, Arthur. "Impact of Containerization: From Adam Smith to the 21st
Centruy." ReviewofBusiness, Fall2004: 10-15.
Gillie, John. "The Port of Tacoma's Falling Fortunes." McClatchy- Tribune
Business News, Oct 24, 2010.
Gooley, Toby B. "Containers Rule!" Logistics Management, Feb 1997: 60.
Grobar, Lisa M. "The Economic Status of Areas Surrounding Major U.S.
Container Ports: Evidence and Policy Issues." Growth and Change, September
2008: 497-519.
Hinderer, Katie. "The Future of Intermodal." Commercial Property News, Aug 1,
2006.
Konrad, John. Container Shipping Companies, the Ten Largest Visualized.
February 2009. http:/ jgcaptain.comfthe-ten-largest-container-shippingcompanies-visualized?678 (accessed March 10, 2011).
Levinson, Marc. The box: how the shipping container made the world smaller
and the world economy bigger. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 2008.
Leach, Peter T. "Sinking Feeling. Impact of Financial Crises on Shipping
Industry." journal of Commerce Online, Oct 22, 2008, A187603816 ed.
Lopez, Erika. "How do ocean carriers organize the empty containers reposition
activity in the USA?" Maritime Plicy & Management, October-December 2003:
339-355.
McLelllan, Rogan. "Liner shipping development trends." Maritime Policy &
Management, December 2006: 519-525.
Medda, Francesca, and Gianni Carbonaro. "Growth of Container Seaborne
Traffic in the Mediterranean Basin: Outlook and Policy Implications for Port
Development." Transport Reviews, September 2007: 573-587.
Postrel, Virginia. "The Container That Changed the World." The New York
Times, March 23, 2006: pC3.
Salisbury, Marsha. "JOC by the Numbers." journal of Commerce, Feburary 21,
2011: 56-59.
Slack, Brian. "Pawn in the Game: Ports in a Global Transportation System."
Growth and Change, Fall 1993: 579-588.

45