Today marks exactly 50 years since the first container ship arrived in the port of Rotterdam, with 226 containers on board. At 11 o'clock this morning, the event, which took place in 1966, was commemorated.
It is an important moment for the port, as from 1966 shipping company Sea-Land started a weekly container service between New York and the western European ports of Rotterdam, Bremen and Grangemouth. Rotterdam therefore became Europe's first port of call. Until 1966, standard-sized containers were not used worldwide, Port of Rotterdam writes. As a result, the process of loading and unloading looked very different. Port workers sometimes took weeks to load and unload a ship. American Malcolm McLean thought it would be much more efficient if everyone worldwide used the same size container. Thus was born the container as we know it today.
'Invention of the century'
"The strength of the container lies in its standardisation," said port economist Bart Kuipers. According to Kuipers, the container is "the invention of the century". "The entire logistics infrastructure is geared to these standard containers : ocean-going vessels, trains, trucks and barges. This steel box led to a gigantic productivity improvement in transport. Everything could suddenly be a lot cheaper and faster. Ships used to spend weeks in port. After the arrival of the container, that became just a few days."
Whisky could not be transported by ship
Fun fact: before the advent of the container, it was not possible to transport whisky by ship. In fact, dock workers tended to drink the cargo themselves. "With the advent of the container, dock workers could no longer just reach the whisky," Kuipers explains.
Port of Rotterdam created the infographic below on container shipping. 
Editorial team LogistiekProfs
