Container full of nappies – China

03 September 2010 - Many years ago, one of our engineers was posted to China for two years, along with his wife and their newborn twins. In those days, disposable nappies were not available in China and so the engineer had some sums to do, calculating how many nappies a child would need over a period of two years - and then multiply that by two.

It wasn’t easy because he also had to take into account the various sizes that the children would require over time. Having done his calculation, he went to a Danish shop where he could buy nappies exclusive of VAT. The nappies would be sent direct to the removal  company who would put them in the container. Soon after, our head office received a phone call from the nappy shop. Our engineer had obviously not calculated the amount of space the nappies required. All in all, they took up 32 cubic metres – a whole container. In the end, the family had to settle for fewer nappies so as to make space in the container for some of their furniture! But all’s well that ends well. When our engineer left China two years later, he still had a few packs of nappies left over...