The struggle between wood and plastic pallets for market share continues apace, with timber still accounting for about 90% of the market share but with plastic gradually gaining ground. Jim Hardisty, MD of Goplasticpallets, believes the driving force behind plastic’s growing appeal is that its benefits are being recognised across a diverse range of industries. “The export market is one example where we’ve seen considerable growth in plastic pallet sales, since low cost, nestable versions are both economical and exempt from ISPM15 heat treatment regulations.” He also sees the strong growth in house building putting further pressure on timber prices as favouring plastic along with hygiene concerns about wood among the food and pharma companies.
The advantages and drawbacks of wood and plastic are well known but every now and then an innovative newcomer arrives on the scene to threaten the status quo. One such arriviste seems to be RM2’s Blockpal composite pallet that offers significant benefits over polymer and wood pallets currently available. It has been independently attested by leading institutions and has been regularly shown to outperform comparable products and industry standards.
Following £137 million raised on the AIM market earlier this year, RM2 has the muscle to take the market by storm, and next year plans to open a British manufacturing facility to add to its existing Canadian factory. So what advantages can one expect from Blockpal? A multi-trip, heavy duty composite pallet, with a high strength to weight ratio, it is resistant to moisture and easy to clean, ISPM15 exempt and meets UL2335 standards for fire retardancy. Available in ISO and Euro sizes, with bespoke units also available, its rack load capacity is 1,540 kg. Users of Blockpal have the choice of outright purchase or rental for closed loops.
RM2 aims to change the way its customers look at pallets from the consumable to an asset that can generate significant accretive profit margins. This makes sense in a market that is seeing a rise in the amount of recycled or re-used pallets as a proportion of the total in issue. But keeping track of many pallets, whatever their material, can be an expensive, distracting attention from a company’s core competence.
One solution to monitoring returnable pallets is to engage a pallet pool operator like Chep and LPR. This rental approach means that the costs can be paid from revenues and so offset against taxes and allows better use of scarce capital resources. Flexibility is also an advantage as additional equipment can be ordered as and when required to meet seasonal peaks. These pallet pools or rental service suppliers do more than just keep track of pallets. It is often said that plastic pallets cannot be easily repaired but PPS Midlands offers plastic and metal welding services to repair plastic pallets, crates, boxes, trays, bins roll cages and Dolav containers. The cost of such repair, claims PPS, is only a fraction of the replacement cost, yet every month companies are discarding damaged plastic and metal handling products, which proves very costly for businesses having to replace such stock. Other services offered by pool operators include cleansing. While returnable pallets can deliver ‘green’ benefits over one-trip pallets the prime motive favouring rental is economic. PPS claims that where it has introduced their returnable transit equipment and management systems it has delivered considerable cost savings for its clients.
There are, of course, palletless alternatives available, both for automated and manual handling. Slip sheets, for example, have been around for over 50 years but curiously have not made any significant inroads into the pallet’s domain. It’s true that they require forklift attachments, and load inverters but the savings from lower, global shipping costs would far outstrip the costs of such tiny investments.
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