EPAL eyes opportunities for EURO pallet portfolio
February 1st 2010 The European Pallet Association (EPAL), which is best known for maintaining a quality assurance and inspection standard for the EURO pallet, has claimed huge potential for expansion in the UK.
Speaking at its Logistics Day at the RBS Williams Centre in Oxfordshire earlier this month, Paul Davidson, chief executive of BREPAL, which is EPAL in the UK and Ireland, said: “There are great advantages to using EPAL pallets if businesses are engaged in import and export activities. For example, we recently helped an Italian exporter of food products into the UK. By moving to EPAL pallets, the supplier takes ownership of pallets as an asset and can sell them in the UK once deliveries have been made. This took a considerable amount of pain out of its costs.”
EPAL has grown strongly in the last decade across Europe. In the peak year of 2008, 68 million EPAL standardised pallets were manufactured in Europe with 17m repaired. This represents remarkable growth from 37m pallets manufactured and 9.5m repaired in 2003. The number of EPAL pallets manufactured in 2009 dipped to almost 63m, but pallets repaired continued to grow to just over 20m.
EPAL campaigns to uphold the standard of its pallets, carrying out spot inspections and audits to ensure that companies are operating standardised and safe pallet inventories.
Davidson added: “We’re working to build up authorised repairers in the UK and trying to educate users on the pitfalls of pallets that have been manufactured or repaired by unauthorised firms. Unauthorised pallets can be of inconsistent quality, unsafe, and may not be exchangeable in the pool.”
As well as educating the logistics supply chain, EPAL is reaching out to end users such as retailers to educate them of the benefits of sound pallet management.
All new pallets produced by EPAL are ISPM15 compliant, meaning they are heat treated to kill pests. More articles from Handling & Storage Solutions: | 
