Construction World August 2015

ENVIRONMENT

STORAGESPACE

Meeting the need for

Pretoria building contractors, J.C. van der Linde & Venter Building Projects' ongoing need to rent storage containers on its building sites led to the company's decision to establish Container Agents, one of South Africa's fastest-growing container rental and sale companies. >

spaza shops, guard houses, laboratories (with special chemical-resistant floors), classrooms, sheds some with floors, and even mobile bachelor studios, also with floors. Willie Mouton, GM of Container Agents, says a potential major growth area is for the provision of containers converted into top-end sanitary facilities, including toilets, showers and wash basins. "This will enable the renter to add men and women's toilets to the container storage space and container offices he or she already hires from us. It is now compulsory to provide separate male and female ablution blocks on building sites so the demand from contractors for containers with ablution facilities is increasing all the time. For customers who prefer the normal chemical toilets for workers on site, Container Agents offer these through a joint venture with Coastal Tool Hire," Mouton stated. Container Agents has a fleet of four crane trucks to deliver both rented and sold containers. The company also owns a special container-handling forklift to assist customers at the company's yard in Donkerhoek, Pretoria. The company can also supply containers to other African countries and arrange trans- port from the nearest harbour to selected building sites.

Based at the N4 Gateway Industrial Park, east of Pretoria, Container Agents – which will next year celebrate its 10th anniversary – is a member of Master Builders Association North, with its director, Charl Venter, the current president of MBA North. José Frazao, MD of Container Agents, says the company has come a long way since it was founded in 2006. "The company's growth was given major impetus during SA's staging of the FIFA 2010 World Cup for which we supplied storage containers for all the new northern stadia building sites. We currently have a stock of over 1 100 pre-used shipping containers, in an unusually diverse range of sizes. Our units are 3 m, 6 m, and 12 m long, and 2,4 m wide and 2,4 m high.

But we also stock the relatively rare 'high cube containers' – which are 2,8 m tall – for rental or sale," he stated. Container Agents focuses on rental busi- ness in an area of within 350 km of Pretoria with about 80% of its customers active in the construction industry. "The containers are generally used for storage of building materials on site or for standard or execu- tive offices, for which we can do a standard conversion, but could also convert according to customers' requirements, with fittings such as specific air vents or air-conditioning, windows and doors, partitions, ablutions (some with showers), and even corporate colours and logos added if required." Container Agents' conversion of containers also produce 'structures' such as

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Container Agents has a special container handling forklift truck, pictured here moving a massive 12 m unit. INSET: Containers are vital site storage components for the South African building industry.

CONSTRUCTION WORLD AUGUST 2015