It’s true, the concept of collapsible containers is not new. The idea has been around since the late 1980s, and there have been a number of collapsing containers introduced to the global shipping industry, but each of them have inherent limitations in that they require extensive manual intervention which introduces significant personnel health and safety risks into traditionally highly mechanised handling procedures. COLLAPSECON is completely original in design. While most collapsible designs have folded vertically, Spectainer recognised a number of problems associated with the “falling roof” design and developed a horizontally collapsing container with a mechanised operation, removing manual operators from the risk zone and significantly improving the efficiency in collapsing and combining containers.

The design of many collapsible containers has required 3-4 people and a crane to operate, and often have taken 15-20 minutes per unit to collapse, usually by lifting or pushing the container. This caused increased wear and tear and increased safety risks. By comparison, COLLAPSECON has true stand back functionality, is semi-automated and can be collapsed by one person in less than 2 minutes.

Collapsing vertically has its benefits, but strength is not one of them. Given the requirement to position containers anywhere on a vessel, the industry must be confident that a collapsible container can sustain the weight of fully laden boxes both at sea and in the port. Vertically collapsing designs have always had limitations as to their stacking capacity. As COLLAPSECON collapses horizontally and utilises strong end-frames, the container is able to sustain 382T and be positioned anywhere on a vessel (even at the bottom of the stack) in either the single or combined state..

While many designs have achieved the intent of collapsing to a 4-1 ratio, an ongoing limitation has been that they are still treated as individual units. This means they save in storage and transport but are still required to be handled individually. To ensure the system is Simple, Efficient, Affordable and Safe, the COLLAPSECON system is designed to be collapsed using only two people with true stand back functionality, in less than 2 minutes. Most importantly, every container is only touched once in the process, thereby reducing the overall handling requirement. Additionally, each unit combines with no external parts, meaning that when combined, it can be treated as a single unit.

COLLAPSECON must perform like any other normal intermodal container. It is made in the same factories, from the same materials, utilising the same processes. It is designed and certified to the same CSC and ISO standards as a normal container and production requires the same level of rigorous testing. Whether in the single or combined state, rest assured that the container is able to be treated like a normal container.