What exactly is a container?

We at Minoli, often speak about containers, a mode of transportation we take for granted, but what is a container?…

The vast majority of the Minoli products are produced in the Northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna near Modena. This area is famous for food, wine, cheese, balsamic vinegar, cars and of course tiles…  

A container is a 20ft (metric measurements don’t seem to be applied in the shipping world) metal box, known in the transport trade as a “dry van”. These containers have a maximum payload of approx. 28,000 KGS.

To put that into the context of tiles, we are able to load around 30 pallets into each container depending on the pallet size. For a euro pallet, (which is 1200 x 800 x approx. 800 high) 30-32 pallets can be loaded.

A typical pallet of 60/60 porcelain floor tiles has 40 ctn, or 43 MT2 – so within a container it is possible to load approx. 1300 MT2.

Once the production order is ready in the plant, a container will be brought to the factory by a truck, the container is then loaded and the truck will deliver the “box” to the rail terminal.

The rail terminal is located north of Modena in Melzo a town
near Milan, which is in the Lombardy region.

The train departs Milan and heads through Italy, Germany,
Belgium and Holland until it reaches the port of Rotterdam.

Once in Rotterdam the container or ‘box’ is off loaded from the train to a specialist container ship, which sails overnight to the UK port of Tilbury.

Once in Tilbury, the load is transferred to another truck,
which brings the container directly to Minoli in Oxford.

Overall the journey time, all things being well is 7-10 days.

The use of containers is by far and away the safest, most economical and environmentally friendly way of transporting tiles.