High expectations
Titan Containers growing – despite the crises.
There’s always been great demand for the Danish company Titan Containers’ products. The latest developments, however, surprised even founder and CEO Layland Barker.
How did Titan Containers do in 2020 and 2021?
Executive business leaders are supposed to experience one earth-shattering event in their professional life. I thought mine was the financial crisis of 2008–2009. I certainly got that wrong! The past two years have seen two huge events – Covid-19 and the meltdown of international logistics. Now 2022 has already delivered a third – a major war in Europe.
You did very well in 2021, however, didn’t you?
We enjoy strong demand at Titan as a supplier of standard and special dry containers for hire and sale, also for project logistics and storage activities. Our unit ‘Self-storage by Titan Containers’ runs 60 self-storage sites in eleven countries, with about 100,000 m2 of storage space (or 230,000 m3).
Titan has grown by around 100% in the last six years. Several capital investment funds were interested in buying Titan, but in December 2019 we decided to only sell a 30% minority stake to a Danish family firm, Kirk Kapital. The DKK 140 million (EUR 19 million) was left in Titan Containers, to strengthen the solidity of the business.
How is your group positioned internationally?
We’re already present in around 30 countries, and our plans include setting up offices in African and South American nations in 2022 and 2023. Many of these are (or will be) Titan’s own offices. We’ll end up with offices in more than 50 countries.
How did you create your network of container depots?
Some of our stations are quite logical, as they’re based on global trade routes and ports; others are solely related to serving Titan customers locally. One essential element of our services is to have local supply and shortest possible delivery times to where a customer needs the units. If our journeys are shorter, then we’re more competitive, which means more business and fewer empty runs. We aim to add a minimum of ten locations to our network every year.
Has Titan invested in upgrading its equipment?
Certainly! We’ve recently added both new and second-hand container handling equipment. We preferred some of the latter as we expect to start adding electric container handlers from late 2022 or early 2023 onwards.
We also added several new crane-mounted road vehicles in Denmark, Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands recently, and have ordered side-lifter trailers for delivery in 2022.
How did you cope with demand for capacities in 2021?
We concentrated the resources we had available on our regular customers. Our ‘ArcticStore’ reefer brand is our main product; we always plan supply in this segment approximately four to six months ahead. We always maintain a reserve inventory too, ready for increased demand. Our price adjustments are related to material costs; they’ve got nothing to do with demand – in contrast to standard container prices.
What are your expectations for 2022?
We’re rather positive about 2022 – despite disruption caused by Covid-19, the stressed shipping market and the war in Ukraine. Even during this latest crisis we experienced about 30% growth the first quarter of this year. Over and above this we simultaneously plan to grow by approximately 10–15% this year, and to double Titan Container’s overall business volume by 2026.