AgentKid
CShaveRR
I suspect that anything loaded into containers is already bagged or boxed, not bulk.
Actually, I heard of a proposal here in Alberta several years ago where there was a plan to ship grain in bulk in containers to far inland destinations in China. There would be a machine that sounded like a variation of the kind of thing you hear about in the coal business. It would turn and hold a container on end, fill it, then cover the open end with the 21st century equivalent of a boxcar grain door, and then they would close the hinged doors.
It was hoped that by doing it this way, they could reduce pilferage problems encountered at China's seaports, before bulk shipped grain ever got inland. I've not heard anything recently about this, so I don't know if it proved unworkable or was a victim of the current economic situation.
AgentKid
There's already lots of grain shipped in containers. But it is a volatile, unpredictable, opportunistic business. The first defect is that grain is a backhaul movement in an empty container that came from Asia loaded with consumer goods or auto parts or something. The grain can never pay enough for a head-haul movement in the container because when its price gets that high, then the bulk ships come out of the copper ore, rubber, bauxite, and iron ore trade, and move grain instead. So the business is only feasible as long as there are containers going back empty, i.e., a really booming import economy.
Second defect is that loaded containers coming from Asia don't go to places like Huron, South Dakota, or Biggar, Saskatchewan, to disgorge their loads of auto parts and tennis shoes. They go to big cities. That creates a major cost hurdle for backhaul of grain in containers -- either the grain has to go the city (or the port) and transload into the container, or the empty container has to go to the grainbelt, which means a lot of empty miles for the container (and an intermodal facility at the grain loading point) or the covered hopper loaded with the grain has to go to the big city or the port.
Third defect is the desire to keep the containers turning. The shipping lines, which own the international containers, do not like to have their containers wander off into the wilderness because they need to keep them moving to keep their costs down, so most of the people who have tried to set up container restuff facilities anyplace other than a port or a big city have never gotten their business beyond the business-plan stage.
Fourth defect is the same problem on the Asian end. The manufacturing is clustered in a very narrow belt along the coasts and around the ports. The ship lines don't want their containers disappearing into the inland of China or Vietnam, either. They might never come back; plus, they want them reloaded with the profitable head-haul consumer goods same day, if possible. And at the ports, there isn't a lot of consumption of animal feed.
Fifth defect is most of the demand for container-size lots of grain is in places like Vietnam and the Philippines, not China, where the ship lines don't really want to go, because there isn't enough of a headhaul demand. The big ships that move the trade to the U.S. don't go to the small ports where there's demand for the containerized grain, and a ship-to-ship transload into the smaller feeder ships is expensive.
Overall, the use of containers for grain transportation is a volatile business with nasty external dependencies. It's not a business you'd want today to make a big investment of fixed plant into, because tomorrow your empty container supply might evaporate.
RWM
