Summer is music festival season and it’s also a time when shipping containers become dressing rooms – and even dining rooms – for the stars.
As the likes of Australian heavy rockers AC/DC roll into town, and summer’s big music events gear up, shipping containers will play an essential part in the make-up of a festival and concert site.
Shipping container specialists Royal Wolf has more than 100 containers already booked to go out to various music events over summer. These include 10 containers, that have been modified into portable cabins, destined for the AC/DC show at Western Springs Stadium in Auckland on December 15, and 45 containers are bound for new day-long festival Auckland City Limits in March.
At festivals and concerts such as Laneway at Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter and Wellington’s Jim Beam Homegrown, containers are ideal temporary solutions that are used as everything from dressing rooms for musicians through to offices for staff.
Because the containers can be stacked they are a simple yet efficient way to save on space around a tight festival area.
Royal Wolf’s North Island Sales Manager Glen Millen says there is always extra demand for containers around this time of year because as well as concert season there are also a large number of other summer festivals and events on.
“These days shipping containers have become so much more than just big steel boxes to transport goods at sea.
“We modify them into a diverse range of products, including container cabins which might not be the usual luxurious surrounds these music stars are used to, but as a temporary home away from home goes, they’re comfortable and functional.“
The real beauty of the containers that are used at concerts is that they are highly portable so once the event has finished they can be picked up and moved to the next. It’s so simple.”
Royal Wolf containers are also being used to house two major exhibitions at present. The National Geographic Photographer of the Year finalists are being displayed in Royal Wolf containers at Karanga Plaza in Wynyard Quarter until November 1.
Also, the National Army Museum’s travelling exhibition Heartlanders: New Zealanders of the Great War, which is set up in three Royal Wolf shipping containers, is touring the country.
