EPAL expanded its position as leading pallet pool in international trade. As from January 2010, all of the newly-produced EPAL pallets will be manufactured in accordance with the ISPM 15-standard. Any participant equipped with a license will comply with this world-wide export standard.

The world-wide markets become accessible without any limitations, it is no longer unusual to transport goods from anywhere to any other place in the world – the world of transportation is shrinking. It is not only steel, oil, vegetables and all the other useful items utilized by us with pleasure every day that are being carried halfway around the globe, but with them, there is also a large amount of tiny pests that are hardly visible to the naked eye. A small pest with a horrifyingly huge impact!

These pests, which do not have any natural enemies in the alien environment, are able to spread without any limitation and can thus become a threat that has to be taken seriously: - they drive out domestic varieties. The habitat is literally occupied by alien pests, and the domestic varieties are not able to oppose the “enemy” brought in! - they disturb processes that have naturally worked out in an ecosystem, thus leading to a dangerous state of imbalance! - they transmit new diseases and parasites that have not yet occurred and that the domestic varieties are not attuned to, and, in this way, they represent a risk to domestic animals and to human beings!

The world is a village

The appearance of new varieties within an ecosystem is a natural process that has been taking place for millions of years all over the world, but the scales have changed completely given the possibilities of the modern world. The large variety of shipments turns the globe into a village.

The Chinese Mitten Crab, for instance, would never have been capable of reaching the mouth of the River Elbe from the Chinese Sea on its own, and it would certainly not be able to get to the city of Magdeburg upstream the River Elbe. Ocean liners coming ashore from China to the port of Hamburg on a daily basis allow this to happen.

More than half of the 47 varieties of nematodes are parasites and/or are pathogenic agents. Naturally, plants, animals and humans do not have any body’s defenses against this kind of diseases. Not being situated in their natural habitat, the pests that have been brought in do not have any enemies and can breed without any control.

According to what has been estimated by the EU Commission, the new varieties introduced cause losses of 12 billions euros every year.

It is agriculture and forestry and therefore also the sector of timber industry that are affected in a particularly severe way by the damages. Untreated raw timber and wooden products used for packaging represent an ideal “lift“ for pests that grow in the wood and finally spread. In this way, the Asian Longhorned Beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) and the Pine Wood Nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus) have been brought in to Europe, and both of them are well-known as dangerous pests.

The Asian Longhorned Beetle (ALB) infests vital deciduous trees, and maturation feeding of its larvae leads to a dieback of the trees on a massive scale. For the city of Berlin, the damage that would be caused by the Longhorned Beetle alone due to an infestation of maple trees was estimated at 96 millions euros, if no action was taken against it.

The ISPM 15-standard

In order to eliminate such kinds of threats to our forests and to the habitats of domestic varieties, the FAO convention on plant protection IPPC (International Plant Protection Convention) has issued the ISPM 15-standard.

The objective of this standard is to prevent pests from being brought in and spread through pallets and other wooden packaging products; this goal can be achieved by subjecting the wooden packaging material either to a treatment with the chemical substance methyl bromide or to heat treatment.

As EPAL has been abstaining for many years from using any kind of chemical substance with the treatment of pallets, the ISPM 15- standard is to be achieved within EPAL soleby by heating the pallets. In the kiln, the pallets have to be exposed to a core temperature of at least 56 ° C for thirty minutes; in this case, we can make sure that both the pests and their eggs, larvae and pupae will most certainly not survive the treatment.

This is the only way to control the threats arising from the entry of alien pests; at present, there is nobody who might be able to gauge the economic losses and the ecological damages of this phenomenon. Many countries, especially those outside of Europe, have become aware of this problem, and therefore they strictly prohibit the import of wood that has not been treated in compliance with the ISPM 15-standard. In addition, it is only a matter of time to implement bindingly this standard for trade within Europe as well. EPAL does already provide the best security possible. As from January 1, 2010, any newly-produced pallet has gone through a heat treatment process in accordance with the ISPM 15-standard. This involves the advantage of a world-wide, unlimited acceptance for any user of EPAL pallets.