ISO Shipping Containers, Refrigerated, Storage & Cargo Containers - Thinking Inside The Box Drives This Company

Thinking Inside The Box Drives This Company

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)

December 1, 2004

Thinking inside the box drives this company
Sea Box, of Burlington County, transforms shipping containers into military products.

Author: Harold Brubaker INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Edition: CITY-D
Section: BUSINESS
Page: C01

Jim Brennan Jr. has built a business out of boxes.

This week, for example, mechanics at Sea Box Inc. in Cinnaminson Township are turning 21 custom-size shipping containers into refrigerators for U.S. Army Special Operations forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The refrigerators, which operate on electricity or diesel fuel, are just one example of the kind of specialized work the Burlington County company does.

Sea Box has turned modular cargo boxes into control rooms for unmanned aircraft, devices that change tires on Stryker armored vehicles - even temporary housing for elephants at the Big Apple Circus.

"We think of them as raw materials and really transform them," Brennan said.

Now, Sea Box, which employs 50, itself is about to be transformed.

Last week, the Department of Defense announced that Sea Box had received a five-year U.S. Army contract worth up to $431 million for as many as 138,000 modular shipping ! containers, which will be designed in Cinnaminson and built in Turkey. The contract will mean a big boost in revenue for the 21-year-old company, though not in jobs locally, Brennan said.

Brennan said that most of the containers sold under the contract would be made in sets of three or four that can be snapped together to form a 20-foot-long container that complies with international shipping standards.

Sea Box's defense contract is among the largest received recently by defense contractors in the Philadelphia region, which is best known for the Aegis weapons system, developed by Lockheed Martin Corp. in Moorestown, Burlington County, and Boeing Co.'s military helicopters, made in Ridley Township, Delaware County.

Brennan, a mechanical engineer by training, got his start in the shipping industry after college, and spent 11 years working for Transport International Pool in Bala Cynwyd, a trailer-leasing firm that is now part of a General Electric Co. uni! t based in Devon.

He went off on his own in 1983, buying and se lling used shipping containers. Eventually, he found a niche supplying specialty containers to the military. The Department of Homeland Security has become a steady customer, buying containers to be used as shelters in emergencies, for example.

Sea Box recorded $14 million in revenue last year and is on track to bring in $23 million this year, Brennan said. He expects to reach more than $100 million a year in sales because of this contract.

The first of the refrigerators, which are 7 feet wide, 8 feet long, and 8 feet high and can serve as a freezer as well, was finished last Wednesday. It came in handy, too, because that is when employees received holiday turkeys as a gift from Brennan.

Contact staff writer Harold Brubaker at 215-854-4651 or hbrubaker@phillynews.com.

Caption:
JONATHAN WILSON / Inquirer Staff Photographer

Sea Box president Jim Brennan Jr. with containers that will be used by the military. Sea Box has turned cargo boxes into control rooms for unmanned aircraft, but also for temporary housing for elephants at the Big Apple Circus.

Brennan said an Army contract of up to $431 million would increase revenue, though not local jobs.PHOTO

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Sea Box, Inc. Corporate Office:
802 Industrial Highway, East Riverton, NJ 08077-1910
Phone (856) 303-1101, Fax (856) 303-1501
E-mail: sales@seabox.com
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