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Dealing with Accelerating Costs of Container Copy Shelves
- 16 February 2012
For some time now, low-quality copy shelves for the CC Container have penetrated the CC Pool System leading to rising operational and repair costs. Container Centralen (CC) are taking steps to end this situation as it affects all users in the system.
Copy shelves are not a new problem to the CC Pool System, but over the last two years the pool has been flooded with copy shelves, and unfortunately the percentage of low-quality shelves is now so high that it affects the general quality of the pool. In 2011, Container Centralen (CC) again had a substantial increase in repair costs of 25%. CC are now forced to take steps to end the situation where costs for repair of broken copy shelves are a burden to the entire CC Pool System.
To ensure long-term sustainability of the CC Pool system, CC will only accept broken original CC shelves for repair. Broken copy shelves will be rejected by CC. All CC depots will be closed for hand-ins of CC Container material (bases, corner posts, shelves) for a period of up to two weeks, in order to implement the new procedures from 6 February. They will re-open for hand-ins no later than Monday 20 February 2012. Hand-outs can still take place at the depots during the entire period.
- “This solution is the best way to avoid continuously raising the annual pool fee by several euros per CC Container in order to cover the increased repair costs due to the low-quality copy shelves. That would be an unfair burden to put on our customers, and CC will not accept that option,” says CC’s CEO, Tonny Vangsgaard Gravesen, and he adds, - “This was also why we carried out a chipboard operation in 2006 to reduce the quantity of chipboard shelves in the system, and to ensure that our customers were not paying for repair of these.”
The decisive requirement for original CC shelves is a minimum thickness of the hook on the shelves. Experienced users can easily distinguish between CC and copy shelves with a simple visual check. However, a measuring tool can be obtained at no costs from CC. At the same time, the already existing requirements are still valid, meaning that e.g. chipboard or metal shelves will still be rejected as obvious copies.
Savings Passed on to Customers
CC recognise that the low-quality copy shelves are still needed in the market to have enough shelves for the daily operations in the industry, and will therefore still handle and exchange non-broken copy shelves. Broken copy shelves will, however, no longer be accepted for repair. Furthermore, CC will share the savings on repair costs with their customers:
- “The savings that we obtain by no longer repairing copy shelves will be extended to our customers. We will therefore reduce the list price pool fee by an additional € 0.50 per container on all invoices issued after 1 October 2012. When the full effect of our changed procedures has been realised, prices will be adjusted accordingly,” says Tonny Vangsgaard Gravesen,
The Future CC Container Shelf
Following input from the market, CC has developed a new pure plastic CC Container shelf with RFID.
- “Manufacturing of the new durable and light-weight plastic shelf will start this year, and the shelf will be in the market for the 2013 season,” Tonny Vangsgaard Gravesen says. – “We want to offer a high-quality alternative to the current wooden shelf pool, which has been flooded with low-quality shelves,” he concludes.
CC are certain that the new shelf will be attractive to many CC Container users, not just because it is light and easy to work with, but also because the pool fee will be lower for the plastic shelves. More information, prices etc. will be sent to CC’s customers later this year.
