When will container industry mature?

As warehouses are constantly
expanded to accommodate
growing volumes of cargo,
commentators are starting to ask the
interesting question of when the world
container industry will “mature”.
In short, when will the world have all
the containers, vessels, and port facilities
it needs.
While the industry is presently in the
doldrums, there is little doubt that it will
recover as world trade rebounds.
And it is world trade that will set the
limits for containerisation.
Commentators point out that
containerisation is following the typical
“S” curve of a product life-cycle.
There was practically no investment
up to the 1970s as containers were a
rarity, with the impetus coming from the
first container ships in the 1960s.
Between 1970 and 1990 the freight
industry “adopted” containers big time –
with containerised traffic trebling to over
500 million TEUs between the 1990s and
the early part of the new millennium.
Containerisation is now at the point
where it affects manufacturing strategies,
and has helped fuel the economies of
China and India.
Containerisation has also moved
inland, and is expected to face “technical”
limits, where economies of scale begin to
limit further expansion.
The question no-one is brave enough
to answer is just when this limit will be
reached.