New shelves for the CC container

In Europe, about 3.5 million of the well-known CC container are in circulation, but if you could count them you’d get to a significantly higher number. "There’s been more and more imitation in recent years and for various reasons that is a serious matter. We've been seeing low quality shelves more and more. The carts can often still be traced back to us or not, but this doesn’t apply to the shelves. In addition, we received more and more reports from customers who have suffered product damage due to poor quality shelves. In recent years this situation has simply become untenable."

This is explained by Barto Cleton, commercial director at Container Centralen. The company is the independent pool manager for horticultural and retail logistics. The company is by far the largest horticultural provider, and manages the entire pool of CC containers. Also an extensive set of services to customers is provided by them.

In response to these growing problems, the company intends to introduce two new shelves in the summer of 2017. These shelves are more durable and offer substantial benefits to CC wood. It was time for renewal: the old wooden shelves are heavy and not very sustainable while the new shelves are lighter and stronger. And that of course benefits both CC supplier and user.

It remains important to continue to further develop the CC container and to ensure the best possible service, because, says Barto, customer requirements change and so do logistics. In the meantime, it is going to take a while before all the shelves have been replaced. The objective is to have CC’s complete pool supplied with new shelves five years after their launch, so in 2022.