It is a simple fact of life that, whatever sort of business you operate, or even if you don’t operate one at all, we almost all of us have things that we need to store – for one reason or another – and in the case of many businesses transport. In the case of some businesses they may need to transport the same items over and over again, bringing them around in a circle, and in the case of others they may simply need to transport items to a customer, offload them, and then return to base with empty containers.

The important word here is "containers". Boxes. Cartons. Bags. Sacks. You name it, we use a lot of containers of one variety or another. Unless you are a manufacturer of really large things – such as aircraft or ships, when you wouldn’t keep the finished product in a container, you will need to use them. In fact, even if you are a manufacturer of ships or aircraft, you will produce thousands upon thousands of parts that all need to be moved from one place to another, and perhaps stored for weeks or months until they are required for assembly.

You might be a manufacturer which is subcontracted to produce parts for the aircraft or ship, and you are still going to need a lot of containers.

You don’t have to be a manufacturer at all. Perhaps you run a fish market stall and you need to go to the harbour where the fish are landed by the trawlers, buy them, and then get them back to your market. The only way you can do that is by using containers. OK, they may be very different containers from the type required for aircraft parts, but they are still containers. In most cases, these will be boxes. They could be wooden boxes, cardboard boxes, or in the case of transporting fish, plastic boxes. You wouldn’t want to transport fresh fish in cardboard boxes because they are wet and would rot the boxes. Equally, if you are manufacturing aircraft parts you wouldn’t want to use cardboard boxes because the aggregate of the weight of the parts could be too much for them.

You might not even be in business at all but have a collection of CD’s or books from way back when, and you need to keep them somewhere in a spare room. The best way to do that is in containers of some sort or another.

However, there is a difference. When you are just keeping some favourite CD’s, you probably are not going to move them about, so a cardboard box will do the job. However, when you are a manufacturer of aircraft parts you no doubt need to fill the containers until you have enough parts to complete the order. Then you may have to store them until the aircraft manufacturer needs them, or you may have to deliver straight away.

Whichever way it works, you deliver full boxes, then bring empty boxes back to your factory/warehouse to fill them up again and then deliver the next batch. There might only be one batch, and you then have to manufacture parts for a completely different project which in turn means that – while you are going to need those containers again – you may just have to store them empty for months on end. Storing plastic boxes which are empty can take up a lot of room.

This is where you might consider nest stacking containers. These have slightly sloping sides and may, or may not, have lids. However, they have one very big advantage over standard containers in that when they are empty, they can take up far less space because they can slip one into another. If they have lids, these can be removed and stored separately.

In fact, nest stacking containers, when empty, can save as much as 75% of the storage space, which means that you need less of it, and it can also save on fuel for transport. Think about it this way: if you use containers all the same size, they are going to take up three times more space than nesting ones. So, for example, it might take four lorry loads to deliver them when full of parts, but you can collect them and bring them back for use next time on one lorry when they are empty. Now that makes sense.