April 26, 1956, is widely regarded as a key date in the history of container shipping when standardised containers were first used to transport cargo by sea. The converted tanker ‘Ideal X’, which sailed from New York to Houston in the US carrying 58 containers on its decks, was the brainchild of trucking magnate, Malcom Mclean who calculated that loading a medium-sized ship in the conventional way will cost $5.83 a tonne compared with less than $0.16 a tonne when carried in containers.

Containerisation thus opened up new markets and gradually connected just about every corner of the world to the global economy.

Growth and development

Today, it is not American but European lines which are dominating container shipping. About 30 container shipping lines operate to different ports of the g

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