Whanganui line marking company Fleet Australasia behind new liquid shipping container

Fleet Australasia CEO John Carr with the new cog container. Photo / Bevan Conley

As Kiwis sit back to watch the first Bledisloe Cup test on Sunday afternoon, Whanganui's John Carr will be intently admiring the sidelines.

Carr, the CEO of Fleet Australasia, is in charge of New Zealand's largest supplier of line marking paints, with more than 70 per cent market share across New Zealand.

Almost every district council and major stadium in the country is supplied with paints by Fleet. The company employs nine staff, including sales reps in New South Wales and Christchurch as well as office and manufacturing staff in Whanganui.

With a significant amount of time on their hands during the sports slowdown caused by Covid-19, the company began exploring ways to reduce its carbon footprint. One area the company highlighted for improvement was shipping.

"We're trying to move away from single use plastics and become a little bit more environmentally friendly, so we've designed a container we're calling the cog container," Carr said.

"When you've got a pallet of buckets, there's a void in between each one. To solve this we came up with a design in the shape of a cog, where they all interlock into each other."

The cog-shaped bucket has the ability to interlock with other buckets, taking up substantially less space when shipping the product. The cogs also allow a strop to be used, preventing the need to use single-use plastic across every bucket.

Carr said it has the ability to revolutionise the way products are shipped both nationally and internationally.

"Effectively in the packaging industry a bucket hasn't changed in 60 years."

"The long term goal is to start moving into different areas. For example, fuel containers potentially. We could potentially look at making them into beer kegs as well."

The cog shaped bucket has the ability to interlock with other buckets, taking up substantially less space when shipping the product. Photo / Bevan Conley

The buckets are completely recyclable, giving the company the ability to bring the buckets back to the factory to clean and reuse.

"We're expecting that hopefully we'll be able to use them about 50 times before we have to recycle them again."

While the container is in the prototype stage, Carr is hoping the idea will find its feet.

"We've got a manufacturing plant in China but the long-term goal would be for us to set up a manufacturing plant here.

"It's a pretty exciting opportunity."