Orders for Containers Explode Due to Refugees in Europe

The container market in the EU has simply exploded due to the influx of refugees. Demand has increased, according to Tehnix’s director Đuro Horvat, by two hundred percent. The largest buyer is the German government, which wants to build container settlements for refugees from Syria.

In addition to that government, others, albeit smaller, see a solution in the construction of container settlements for refugees. Although there is high demand for containers in the market, some European companies have not fared well in this situation and are only now getting involved in the business, while others have problems with limited capacity. Tehnix from Donji Kraljevec near Čakovec has a contracted order of one thousand containers worth five million euros by the New Year, a large part of which, says Horvat, is intended for refugee settlements.

– The European Union market has shown interest for several years in building kindergartens, schools, nursing homes, and healthcare facilities, which is why we collaborate well with partners from Luxembourg to whom we deliver a thousand containers a year, and the Swiss are building local police stations from our containers. We have already contracted jobs worth ten million euros for the first half of 2016. Growth could continue even after the refugee crisis because container settlements will certainly be quality and cheap solutions – says Horvat.

Although it did not respond to our inquiry, we hear that Krapina’s Jedinstvo also has large orders from Germany, as does the Rijeka company Euromodul. Euromodul’s board member Mile Lulić says they must deliver 350 containers to Swiss and German partners by the end of the year, and that they are even rejecting some orders due to lack of capacity, although they also have a subsidiary in Serbia.

The amount of work with containers is also shown by the situation faced by Detmers container from Sv. Križ Začretje. Director Maja Buconjić Barišić says that they currently have no orders from Germany, but that such demand has opened up space in Croatia as a large part of their capacity is directed towards building refugee settlements. For example, they quickly got a job in the Port of Ploče, and Viadukt is urgently looking for new containers, so Detmers container will likely have to introduce a second shift to meet part of the demand in the Croatian market.