Drive Supply Chain Speed, Resiliency and Agility with Plastic Pallets
Guest blog by James Riegleman from MHI Member Company ORBIS Corporation
When it comes to accelerating your supply chain, you need to move your products faster, safer and more cost-effectively than ever. Between your customers and suppliers, there isn’t an expectation of convenience and speed – it is a requirement. Any disruptions to the supply chain can be costly, from both a financial and an operational standpoint. Companies need a reliable, repeatable, and standardized way to store and move products while minimizing both costs and impact on the environment.
Historically, wood pallets have been a staple in transporting products through the supply chain. Due to their low cost, wood pallets have become the industry standard. While cost-effective upfront, wood pallets may not be best suited for use in automated processes and may cause operational challenges within the supply chain.
Within the gamut of wood pallet suppliers, different brands may design pallets differently and to different quality standards. If you select a wood pallet incompatible with your system or use one with invisible damage, products transported on wood pallets can have a higher risk of being damaged or even rendered useless. Furthermore, you can risk your team’s safety through exposure to splinters, wood chips and nails, not to mention the downtime that can occur if loose boards or wood chips disrupt your automation.
Many organizations have recognized the importance of environmental sustainability and have started having conversations on making sustainable and environmental decisions for both the organization and the planet.
This is where partnering with a trusted resuable packaging provider comes in. Plastic pallets are an economic and environmental pallet choice. By using reusable packaging, companies can improve the flow of product and minimize disruptions throughout the supply chain process. Traditionally, plastic is seen as not the most environmentally friendly material, however, through innovation and sustainability efforts, the use of recyclable plastic pallets leave a strong, lasting impact.
Improved handling, automation, and organization throughout the supply chain. Manufactured with risk-reducing material additives, plastic pallets can offer an improved and consistent automation performance, allowing for more streamlined and cost-effective safety inspections.
With a hygienic design, plastic pallets can easily be cleaned, sanitized and eliminate space for contaminates. These pallets are built from an interlocking design that vastly reduces the risk of wood-related injuries like splinters.
To create a more organized and cleaner production area, plastic pallets can be color customized, designed for retail displays and include various options including molded-in logos, hot stamps and labels for easy identification.
Lower cost of ownership. A key attribute of a plastic pallet’s design is durability. Today’s plastic pallets can complete over 200 trips, providing a long service life and return on investment.
Some plastic pallets, like those produced in ORBIS lines, can travel 400 trips in a supply chain, versus wood pallets that may only travel 11 trips*. And, reusable pallets drive value for today’s planet minded companies. In one Packaging Life-Cycle Assessment, plastic pallets can reduce solid waste by 72%, greenhouse gas emissions by 3.2% and energy usage by 71%.**. At the end of the service life of a reusable pallet, it can be fully recycled into other useful pallets, without entering solid waste stream.
With various stacking capabilities, plastic pallets securely stack on top of each other for lower transportation costs, delivering a reduction of costs across the supply chain.
Increased safety and performance. Adding to their strong and durable core, plastic pallets are designed with contoured corners and smooth surfaces to eliminate nails, rust and splinters. With consistent dimensions, plastic pallets lend themselves to safer stacking and reduced product damage.
Positive environmental impact. As environmental sustainability takes priority with the c-suite, the supply chain is often the first place they look to make improvements. While many wood pallets will need to be disposed at end of life with a short service lift, many plastic pallets are fully recyclable at the end of their service life.
Reusability gives companies a better way to move product in their supply chain, as well as reduce their impact on the environment. As automation and sustainability continue to impact today’s supply chains, consider making the switch to reusable pallets.
*Source: Performed by the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design, the FasTrack life-cycle analysis uses a multistep handling sequence to simulate rough handling of palletized unit loads.
** Source: ORBIS Corporation LCA Study of 3,000 pallets making 6 trips a year and recycled at end of life.
