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Q&As since 1989


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Rust in transportation by ship

We have been sending our hand tools made of iron to Europe and USA for long time. recently we found a severe problem of rust in our products. We could not realize the cause of rust as we are putting rust preventing in all products duly painted o some surface.

I wanted to know about term container rain and its causes .

MAHENDRA
HANDTOOLS - Delhi, INDIA
2005

Container rain is basically just as the name implies, water condensing on the roof & walls of shipping containers during long transport periods and this can drip on the products inside. The cause is high humidity, something you can't really avoid with sea transport around the equator. search google for "container rain" and you will find heaps of companies offering services such as specially built containers, dehumidifiers and desiccants to cut this off this at the source. But anyway what kind of rust prevention are you currently using? perhaps there's a problem with it?

Peter Van de Luecht
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
2005

A. Dear sir,
I tried a product called Autosol [on eBay or Amazon] which is good for the application you said, we tried this on our export enfield bullet bikes, which had this problem of rusting.

M.Shanmugam
- Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
2005

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The complete answer to your problem is Vapor Corrosion Inhibitors (VCIs). The best product for your situation might be the bags or plastic sheeting. We have a customer that had a similar problem that was solved by final rinsing in VCI cleaner then packing in crates lined with VCI plastic. The VCIs will stop corrosion for many months if done right.

Grady Knight
Knight-Pro, LLC - Colville, Washington, USA
2005