Box solution for grain carriage uses easy-to-install plastic liner

Mr Morrison told the Australian Grains Industry Conference 2012 at Crown Conference Centre in Melbourne last week that Maersk had made progress in “working to refine liners”.

“We have now a solution that allows containers to be lined with an adhesive plastic material… it increases the volume and reliability of food-grade containers for our customers, minimises the overall cost of upgrading and producing food-grade containers and reduces the overall positioning cost.”

He said the plastic liners took about 20 minutes to put into a container. “It reduces the lead-time significantly ... and it speeds up the process of us being able to get that container to our customers.”

At the environmental level, the plastic liner for the containers was “a net positive in terms of energy” with recyclers prepared to pay to take it away.

“We’ve also been working with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to ensure that we will be developing a product that will be acceptable to them,” he said.

He said trials using the plastic liner had been conducted while shipping grain from Australia to New Zealand.

“Those trials have been fairly successful… We hope to be able to roll this out very, very quickly.

 “We are very close to being able to announce how it will be implemented and made available to our customers.”