Companies have a vested interest in knowing where cargo containers filled with their products or supplies are located at any given time.
But given the fact that ships carrying thousands of cargo containers are constantly circling the globe, it’s often difficult to know exactly where each particular container is located … until now, that is.
Introducing ‘Smart Containers’
TRAXENS is a French technology company that has developed antennas that can be attached to individual cargo containers so that they can be constantly tracked and monitored via satellite from anywhere in the world and at any time.
Working with the French cargo ship company CMA CGM, the technology firm currently is testing the antennas on only one ship — the CMA CGM Bougainville, which happens to be the largest cargo container ship in the world flying under a French flag.
The antennas allow the cargo containers to communicate with CMA CGM headquarters in Marseilles, France so that their location can be followed online by their owners. Information about the cargo container’s temperature, humidity level, vibrations, any impacts, attempted unauthorized opening, customs clearance information, and more can also be instantly accessed remotely.
The cargo containers transmit information in real time whether they are on land or at sea — data that can be valuable to customers, insurers, customs agents, and others. It provides a level of transparency that eliminates the proverbial “intermodal black hole” that most cargo container owners experience when their containers are in transit.
The antennas also allow operators to remotely control and adjust such things as the temperature of refrigerated cargo containers.
First of Its Kind
The Bougainville — which was christened October 5 in Paris — can carry up to 17,722 cargo containers at a time. The ship itself is longer than the Empire State Building and is wider than an Olympic-sized swimming pool. It is powered by an engine that can produce enough electricity to supply a city of 16,000 homes and has a thrust equal to ten Airbus A380 commercial passenger jets, the largest passenger plane in the world.
The Bougainville is equipped with the latest environmental technologies, making her one of the world’s “greenest” cargo containers. With the optimization of her hydrodynamics, her CO2 emissions are historically low.
There’s even a free website devoted to tracking the Bougainville’s location as it travels its standard route between ports in France and Asia via the Suez Canal. (As of this writing, the Bougainville was docked at a port in Shanghai, China.)
Calling every 77 days at the Port of Le Havre in Paris, the Bougainville can carry about 200,000 tons of cargo between Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia.
The Bougainville is named for Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, a French Navy admiral and explorer who fought for the US in the Revolutionary War. He also was led the first team of French explorers to circumnavigate the globe and is credited with settling the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina. The island of Bougainville in Papau New Guinea is also named for him.