The reasons for the development of cargo unitisation were discussed in Chapter 2 and it was explained that most people concerned with international break bulk cargo carriage felt that the through transport cost to the shipper had to be reduced or stabilised if the shipping industry was to meet the needs of international trade. One way to accomplish this reduction, (applied to break bulk shipping) is to use the same underlying principles of handling that are used in the bulk cargo area in the movement of general cargo. This means handling homogeneous cargoes by mechanical handling equipment in as near a constant flow as possible. This, in turn, means consolidating small individual packages of cargo into standard units and designing the handling equipment to move them without disturbing the individual packages.