90% of the world’s commodities are carried by sea, 60% packaged in steel containers. In 1956, inventor Malcolm McLean designed what we now recognise as the shipping container; he understood that standardised container sizes could automate ship and railway loading and unloading. His actions reduced transport costs from $5.86 per ton to just 16 cents. Nowadays, innovators are focusing on the ships: container ships, on average, have doubled in size over the last 20 years, now able to carry 24,000 containers, or 900 million cans of baked beans. Read full article here
