Use Of Containers For Shipping Wool

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31161, 10 September 1966, Page 24

Use Of Containers For Shipping Wool

As a step in the direction of trying to keep freight costs down ships of the future may carry packages of wool, as of other commodities, in containers. Australia is actively moving in this direction and there is interest in this development in New Zealand.

The Wool Research Organisation at Lincoln is working on the denser dumping of wool with the objective of reducing freight costs. Dr. A. R. Edmunds and Mr A. Barker, of the organisation’s staff, who are working in this field, said this week that they were actively interested in the subject of containerisation and one aspect in which they were particularly interested was that it was very likely in the near future the design of ships intended for carrying containers would come up for consideration and they [had been informed that they (would be consulted.

“We have nothing more definite than this at the mo-

ment and this limits what we can do,” they said this week, “but we are actively interested in it and when we have something definite it will be incorporated in our work.” Dalgety and New Zealand Loan’s news service reported this week that experiments being conducted by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia might lead to substantial savings in wool transport costs in keeping with the Federal Government’s plan to introduce containerisation on a national scale as soon as possible. The senior principle research scientist at the C.5.1.R.0. Division of Textile Physics at the Ryde research laboratories, Mr J. G. Downes, said more than 50 million dollars was now being spent on transporting Australian wool overseas. Freight costs to the United Kingdom were approximately 10 dollars a bale, while inland transport costs from the grower to the point of sale were upwards of four dollars a bale. Mr Downes was addressing a special school of wool technology and wool commerce at the University of New South Wales on “packing of wool at higher density.” Mr Downes said only 42

conventional bales of wool 1 could be placed in standard containers having an over-all width of Bft, height of < Bft and length of 20ft. This would leave considerable waste space in the container with' a net weight of only six tons, he said“To take full advantage of the weight rating of the container of about 18 tons net would mean doubling the density of existing bales or having their effective volume down to a value of about nine cubic feet. “If one contemplates the use of a bi-axial type of press with a vertical thrust of 100 tons, producing bales of 10 cubic feet, there should be a reduction of 45 per cent on present volume and some 92 bales fitted into the container giving a load of 13 tons net.” Mr Downes. however, warned that results were still lin the experimental stage and the C.5.1.R.0. was not yet at the stage when it could give manufacturers or users detailed specifications on how to apply newer methods. Trials were also being conducted to produce smaller bales in the shed and to cut the effective bale volume by 25 per cent while retaining the conventional pack. “If one is prepared to go to a more unorthodox method and to provide rigid ends for the bale, a reduction in volume of rather more than 40 per cent could be obtained," he said. “These figures represent about the limit in shed pressing without going to much more powerful types of press,” he added.

The Deputy Australian Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr McEwen, told a recent shipping containerisation conference in Canberra that the Government hoped that containerisation—shipping cargo in standard containers on specialised ships—would halt rising freight costs, endangering Australia’s trade. The conference was attended by 150 representatives of shipping interests. Mr McEwen said containerisation had cut shipping freights on the Matson Hawaiian-West Coast of the United States run by up to one-third since 1957, while in the same period export freights from Australia to the United Kingdom and the Continent had risen by almost one-third.