How a single shipping container in a Port Kembla backyard grew into a second-gen industrial player

Resilience, reinventions and the Ralston family business

For most people, a shipping container is just a steel box. For the Ralston family, it’s been the backbone of a 30-year enterprise that has quietly grown up alongside the industry itself.

What began as a one-man operation in a Port Kembla backyard has become the Illawarra’s only locally based container business, now run by two brothers navigating a more complex and diversified market than their father ever knew.

James Ralston Snr rolled his first container into the yard in 1995. Today, his sons Jason, 26, and James, 31, lead Foreshore Shipping Container Services, a business that has shifted from simple hire-and-sell transactions to a multi-stream operation serving SMEs, tradies, entrepreneurs and now, sadly, people priced out of the region’s tightening housing market.