30 Years Ago

A LOOK BACK AT SEPTEMBER 1991

The global economy was having a tough time of it thirty years ago, which was reflected on the cover of the September 1991 issue: “From top gear to neutral in one year”, we said about the tank container industry. That summarised our review of tank container manufacturing, a sector then still largely concentrated in Europe (with the notable exception of South Africa and the beginnings of an industry in the US), but one undergoing a sudden decline.

The problem was our old friend ‘supply and demand’. Interest from chemical producers had waned in the face of declining end user demand, resulting from the economic crises of the late 1980s and early 1990s; the market was already well supplied after a surge in tank manufacturing in 1989 and the first half of 1990. It had been hoped that the fall of the Communist bloc would have opened new markets but those countries were strapped for cash and sales were disappointing, with only WEW managing to make much headway.

Still, for those who follow the tank container market these days, it is interesting to see who the big players in the manufacturing business were back in 1991: South Africa’s Consani was leading the way, expecting to produce 800 tanks in 1991, followed closely by Universal Bulk Handling (UBH) in the UK, and the French duo of BSL Transport and Containeering (the latter’s designs also being produced by CITBA in France and Welfit Oddy in South Africa), with WEW in Germany and CPV in Ireland also well represented. Their output figures, though, are now vastly exceeded by production capacity at the major Chinese firms that have dominated the market over the past decade or more.

Elsewhere in the September 1991 issue, ‘HJK’ provided an extensive report from the Pira Update Seminar, the annual conference for the UK dangerous goods sector, now under the wing of the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) – and we hope to see it back in action next year. At the time, the value of the event was enhanced in no small part as Lance Grainger, senior principal in the dangerous goods sector at the UK Department of Transport, was also chair of the UN Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods.

Along the way, Lance noted that the UN Committee had adopted modifications for the test methods for Class 1 articles on the basis of proposals from the USSR and that these would appear in the revised Test Manual, “a document which had developed in piecemeal fashion and which was badly in need of revision”, a task the UK had rather rashly offered to take on. Those readers who are involved in product classification and whose instrument of torture is the Manual of Tests & Criteria can here get a glimpse into its origins.

Lance also reported happily that, after four years of hard work, the UN experts had agreed on new criteria for Class 2 gases and their separation into three divisions, as well as revisions to definitions and carriage provisions for Division 6.2 infectious substances, an area that has lately received more interest after experience in its application in the Ebola virus response and, still ongoing, dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. The UK experts were, perhaps, ahead of the game on that one.