EUR-pallet exchange pool shall be extended to an international level

The European Pallet Association, EPAL, wants to be up to the economy’s future standard by launching new EUR-pallet sizes. At the same time the importance of the client-specific special pallets is going to increase, as stated at the 7th DVZ pallet symposium in Frankfurt/Main last Tuesday.

The present EUR-pallet exchange pool will still be important in the future, says Professor Rolf Jansen, head of the faculty for logistics at the university Dortmund. Yet he assumes that the demand for client-specific pallets will increase within the next ten to twenty years. Also the use of leight weight pallets will increase in order to reduce transport weight. Another great savings potentials can be achieved by using the RFID technology, so Mr Jansen.
Oliver Wittig, head of the logistics department at Haribo, Bonn, disapproves the bad quality of redelivered EUR-pallets. Therefore he calls on the public EUR-pallet pool to take appropriate action to ensure the quality standards. In contrast the pallets of the private blue pool do not give reason for complaint. Yet they are more expensive as he has to pay for them himself.
Mr Werden Gerber, manager at CHEP Germany, Cologne, provides the corresponding quality score: there are only 1.16 complaints upon 1 million delivered pallets because of quality defects – considering that there 2.5 million pallet movements per day.
The EUR-standard pallet (800x 1,200) is widespread in Europe, yet it is reaching its limit overseas as there and also in England people favour pallets of other dimensions for use. According to Thomas Ulitzsch, secretary of the Gütegemeinschaft Paletten, Münster, the European Pallet Association will tackle this problem by launching three new pallet types.
The EUR 3 pallet, so the project name, will come up with the size 1,000 x 1,200 mm. The size of the EUR 2 pallet is 1,200 x 1,000 mm with a more robust sub-frame. The third pallet is the EUR 6 pallet with the size 800 x 600 mm which shall replace the Düsseldorfer pallet, says Thomas Ulitzsch.

DVZ 03/02/2007 (jkh/hec)