Shipping container manufacturing process
The world needs around 177.6 million cargo containers to trade 1687 million tons of goods every year. Container manufacturers around the world are taking safety as the core agenda throughout the whole shipping container manufacturing process.
Starting with the wall panel
The manufacturing of these high-demand products literally starts with rolled sheets of steel. Larger rolled sheets of steel are cut into smaller 8 feet x 3 feet sheets. These smaller sheets get corrugated and sandblasted to get the wavy texture which adds resilience to the steel shipping container. Then comes welding the smaller sheets together to create the wall panels.
Setting Up the floor frame
After wall panels, the shipping container floors frames of the shipping box are assembled. The floor frames generally consist of several small I-beams fitted within the structure of two long I-beams. Generally, another layer of sandblasting is added here to remove any rough welding edges between the assembled parts.
Constructing the micro components
The completion of the floor frame only leaves the construction of remaining micro components like doors, corner posts, and roofs. Similar to the shipping container wall panel components, the roof and doors are created with corrugated steel. Then the doors are welded inside the structural frame and the corner posts are fitted into I-beams.
Assembling of cargo container
As soon as all the micro-components are done, the time to assemble all the parts to finalize the process comes close. An empty freight container weighs 3,750kg, so the micro-components will not be easier and light-weight to handle. At this junction of time, all the micro-components are craned in a place to be welded together with a finishing touch of sandblasting to take away rough ends.
Priming and painting
Resilience is one of the most sought-after characteristics of cargo boxes. Container traders incorporate resilience as an integral part of the manufacturing process. Therefore, before painting the maritime containers they are primed with an undercoating of paint to add their strength. After the undercoating is dry the containers get spray painted multiple times. The paints generally act as a weatherproof measure for freight units while they are in intermodal transportation, especially a buffer to any reaction due to harsh salty seawater.
Addition of wooden flooring
After all the assembling, priming, and painting only the floor frame of the box remains bare. Here six pieces of plywood are used to seal up the bare floor frame. The six plywood first get painted and screwed on top of the bare frames to act as solid flooring for the box. The paint reacts as a protective measure to prevent the presence of insects in the wooden plywood.
Shipping container Identification Process
Painting is not the end of the whole process. Each manufacturer stamps their own logo and a unique twelve-character alphanumeric identification on each container. Interestingly, all the twelve characters have special corresponding meanings. They denote the manufacturer’s identity, product batch for cross tracking, etc. To seal to perfection, the last character is z meaning secured fulfillment of all the other obligations under the other 11 characters.
At this stage, a rubber seal is glued on the doors to have air-tight units. This makes sure the goods inside the box won’t be exposed to any outside influence.
Final inspection
The shipping container manufacturing process is a very thorough and detail-oriented process. Every trader wants a perfect product because slight imperfection could cost them devastating losses. The manufacturer does a last set of tests before releasing the products to the market. These tests are done to make sure each container is weatherproofed and capable of preventing any leaking. In this stage, the maritime shipping container is sprayed with water to detect any leakage. Here, the cargo unit gets a spray of paint to further smooth out any inconsistency.
