Career
UNIPARTNERS
WRITTEN BY THIJS GHERING
It is not unlikely that you, the reader, has at least once seen a container that is used for shipping products across the world with a cargo ship or train. Chances are that this would have been a so-called 20ftcontainer, as this is the most used variant worldwide. However, there is another type of container that is used extensively around the globe, the tank container. In 2019, a total of 604,700 tank containers were used worldwide, which is a 10.8% increase compared to 2018. This significant growth is one of several reasons that constant innovation is key in the competitive world of bulk transport.
Because that is what tank containers are mostly used for, bulk transport. The transportation of all the (semi)-raw materials you can think of, like oil, corn, chalk, cacao, chocolate, flour, milk, rice and many, many more. It is important to mention that every time such a container is to be filled with product, the truck driver has to climb on top of the container in order to open the manhole covers. And it is exactly this action that, in the twentyfirst century, could be automated to increase the safety of the truck drivers and the efficiency of the loading operation. At least that is what they thought at Van Den Bosch, a top-10 European bulk transport company that leads through constant innovation.
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Van den Bosch Ever since it was founded in 1964, Van den Bosch has been driven by the will to do things differently. To challenge everything that is standard, traditional, and customary. Among other things, they innovate with the ground-level controlled manhole cover. “These kinds of innovations fuel our business and enable us to positively change supply chains. Because of that we see ourselves as the Supply Changer in Bulk.”As mentioned, the goal of Van Den Bosch was to come up with a manhole cover that can be opened and closed by the truck driver without having to climb on top of the tank container. At the start of this project,
