Container Dongas for Sale: The alternative to demountable buildings

On an Australian worksite, a donga is any portable building a crew works, eats or shelters in, and the word has been part of mining and construction language for over a century. It covers site offices, lunch rooms, sleeping quarters and ablution blocks.

Modern dongas are a long way from the basic tin sheds the name once described: insulated, air conditioned and wired for power. At Container Traders, a donga means a shipping container converted into a site office or lunch/crib room, easily relocatable between sites via rail or road.

Both are portable site buildings, built differently. A demountable is a framed structure with panel walls, bolted together in sections. A container donga is built from a shipping container, typically a New Build Shipping Container. That steel shell was engineered to carry cargo across oceans, so rain, dust and sun on a mine site are lighter duty than the conditions it was built for.

Most of the Dongas we build go to mining and civil crews as site offices and crib rooms. We have a full in-depth guide on our range of modified shipping containers for mining sites.

Your project coordinator needs somewhere to run inductions, mark up drawings and get paperwork done out of the dust. Our office shipping containers come wired with power, data outlets, lighting and air conditioning. For a Pilbara iron ore company we built a 10ft office that relocates project to project, and for a NSW civil contractor a 20ft office with workbenches, shelving and a lockable recess for a generator.

For sites without mains power, we build self-contained dongas. One recent 20ft site office left our yard with a kitchenette, split system air conditioning and a diesel generator in its own external bay, ready to run off-grid on a remote mining site.

Between shifts, your team needs an insulated, well-ventilated space to eat and cool down. Air quality in dongas has a measurable effect on crew fatigue, something the mining industry press has covered. Our lunch room shipping containers can include ventillation, insulation, whirlybirds and air conditioning.

Whatever standard your site enforces, we can build to it. Mine spec electrical is a common request in the mining sector. Let us know the requirements and our team will see how we can help.

Every donga leaves our workshop custom designed for your site, or built to one of our popular off-the-plan layouts. A single shipping container is 2.44m wide, and where a wider room is needed we cut out the side walls and join two containers into one open floor. Each half still travels as a standard container load.

A container donga travels as standard freight. It fits any container truck and unloads by tilt tray or sidelifter, with no crane needed on most sites. Because every donga keeps its ISO corner castings, it can also load onto a rail wagon for long remote legs into the Pilbara and the NT. Our delivery guide covers lead times and site access.

A container shelter attaches directly to your Dongas, giving your team a covered workspace out of the sun and rain. The dome fabric is UV rated and the covered space doubles as equipment storage. It’s common our customers request PA doors installed to the side of the containers to easily access their container office or crib room easily from the shelter. We offer both shelters and sheds, with customised sizes and accessories to suit your site. We run this setup at our own Perth depot, where our modification team works under one with their tools and gear stored underneath.

Send us your project and we will be back within two business days with our best price, including delivery to your site. Call 1300 89 89 70, or request a quote online and tell us what your crew needs.