Before being seduced by Mrs. Robinson in the iconic 1967 movie, The Graduate, a certain Mr. McGuire takes the confused young Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) aside to offer career ideas. “Just one word,” McGuire said, “Plastic. There’s a great future in plastics.” Oddly enough, that time frame roughly paralleled the beginning of plastic pallets.
Now, almost 40 years later, plastic pallets continue to benefit from design and manufacturing process refinement that are designed to provide better value for existing plastic pallet users, while making them more attractive to the vast majority of pallet users who use pallets made of other materials – predominantly wood.
Plastic pallets have been enduringly popular in applications such as distribution. Think of U.S. Postal Service and downstream consumer goods delivery from distribution center to retail store and stackable and rackable captive storage applications. In more recent years, plastic pallet usage has taken off in areas such as lightweight plastic pallets for export (ISPM-15 exempt and light weight). And even in consumer goods applications, plastics have become more prominent due to the emergence and growth of iGPS, Svenska Retursystem (Swedish grocery industry pool) and Drankenpallet (Dutch beverage pallet pool). In spite of growing interest, plastic pallets still probably make up only 5% or less of the total U.S. pallet market.
Surprisingly, many segments of the pallet market are still just discovering plastic pallets, according to some plastic pallet vendors. “In spite of plastic pallets being around for 35-40 years,” Curt Most, senior product manager- pallets and bulk at ORBIS Corporation, commented, “they are still new to many people.” Most added that his company continues to field fresh leads from a variety of applications.
As for what is new, Most and Onofre Costilla, marketing manager & new business development at PTM (Plásticos Técnicos Mexicanos), both stressed the importance of custom compounding of resin types as well as regrind and virgin resin combinations to provide best value depending upon the demands of particular applications.
For example, ORBIS works with a variety of materials, including polyethylene and polypropylene, choices of new or regrind, as well as specific additives such as metal flake and barium sulphate. The value of the latter two additives is with respect to detection in food production systems. If a fragment of the pallet breaks off during food processing, it will be detected by a metal detector in the case of metal flake, or X-ray examination in the case of barrium sulphate. The medical community uses barium sulphate by patients swallowing it to help aid in internal diagnosis.
Another important additive to emerge recently is the non-halogenated fire retardant to replace brominated fire retardants, banned in recent years, following (but not necessarily directly related to) some rather sensational discourse in the media between former iGPS leadership and Bruce Scholnick, late NWPCA president.
ORBIS and Polymer Solutions International have announced the availability of Factory Mutual (FM) approved halogen-free flame retardant pallets. Talking to other plastic pallet vendors, some indicate they can definitely offer non-brominated flame retardant pallets, but haven’t actively promoted that option. Some plastic salespeople characterize interest in fire rated pallets as being modest. There are, however, requirements for every application, and where fire rating is demanded, plastic pallet vendors are increasingly able to deliver. Moving forward, fire-rated pallets as a requirement for plastic pallet pooling across various types of facilities is assumed by many to be a requirement.
One area that continues to be a focus is in getting more performance out of less material, and thereby providing a good price for a great performing pallet, while weighing less. This has been a general movement as vendors strive to be more competitive. Some examples include the rackable twinsheet thermoform pallet from Shuert used in the Swedish grocery system (Svenska Retursystem), and the Ultra Pallet® from PTM, adopted by Heineken and Coca Cola Femsa in Mexico.
Costilla of PTM described the Ultra Pallet as injected with recycled plastic in two parts which are then snap fitted together and reinforced with foam in the columns. He emphasized that the Accelerated Life Simulation test developed by Virginia´s Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design indicate that the Ultra Pallet® can withstand 100 trips, over twice the number of trips of a traditional plastic pallet.
Hygiene and food safety have also been a focus of design improvement for the plastic pallet sector. Not only are detective additives that can be spotted by metal detector or X-ray important, but also one-piece design that facilitates effective washing without debris being trapped in hard to reach spots. There is a very large difference between a standard pallet and a hygienic pallet, stated Most of ORBIS.
Other notable plastic pallet trends, a number of vendors have been in offering more sizes, especially smaller footprints for more agile retail delivery into smaller retail format retails in addition to floor-ready retail displays. But because plastic pallet mold tooling costs are so expensive, typically plastic is at a disadvantage pursuing custom pallet orders unless they constitute a large enough potential market to justify the investment. With this in mind, Custom Built Plastic Pallets, now operating for more than a year, targets the custom size plastic pallet marketing, providing custom sized plastic pallets from extruded, 100% recycled PVC resin, which it cuts to length as needed.
Another area related somewhat to plastic pallets is with respect to composites. “What is really interesting in the currently economy, commented Laszlo Horvath, assistant professor and director, Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design at Virginia Tech, “is that we have wooden pallets that easily carry the required load but we have issues with nails, mold, etc. However, they only cost $15-$20. Then, we have multiple use plastic pallets with equivalent load carrying capacity that cost significantly more ($50-$80). Up to this point there isn’t any design or material that would fill this gap (between $20 – $50).”
In the future, Laszlo expects that either fiber (either synthetic or natural) reinforced plastic composites or newer wood based composites will start to gain a larger market share by entering the current market void, an area that is currently being pursued by products that provide wooden pallet impact protection through plastic end protectors or forklift attachments that have the same objective. Vendors include pointGUARD™ Pallet Protector, Amtek and Product Protector.
So all of these years later the future is still plastics, and wood remains the dominant player. Increasingly, it may be composites that become the key to the future. Going forward, we might just see more materials at work together in the form of composites, and not just competing.
