Smart pallets offer a dual advantage: the superior durability of plastic over wood, plus IoT sensors that act as data carriers throughout your supply chain.

Here’s how other companies have shed light on their darkest supply chain areas using smart pallets, transforming both visibility and efficiency.

What is a smart pallet?

A smart pallet is a reusable (usually plastic) pallet that can be equipped with sensors and trackers to allow users to monitor its location, movement and even its environment. This means those managing supply chains can better detect and respond to interruptions, delays, and issues across their entire supply chain.

How can a smart pallet support you?

The impact of implementing smart pallet technology reaches far beyond simple tracking capabilities. Our clients consistently report dramatic cost reductions across their entire supply chain operations.

You can read more about how our Digpal Plastic Pallet smart pallets helped a multinational fashion brand in our case study here.

The central benefit of smart pallets is the ability to gather data from across your supply chain and use this information to streamline operations.

Digipal smart pallets combine advanced tracking with practical design innovations. Their engineered construction enables both stable racking and efficient nesting, reducing storage space when empty. Precision manufacturing ensures consistent dimensions across every pallet, streamlining automation and standardising load capacity throughout the supply chain.

While some in the logistics industry have yet to adopt this technology, early adopters are already gaining significant competitive advantages.

Smart pallets continue to evolve, and these new breakthroughs allow your supply chain to get even more from this tech. Let’s take a look at the recent developments that make adopting smart pallets a no-brainer.

1. Optimise Asset Utilisation

Smart pallets serve as crucial monitoring points throughout your supply chain, helping identify and eliminate costly blockages and leakages. By tracking pallet movement and dwell times, businesses can pinpoint inefficiencies, reduce operational bottlenecks, and optimise asset utilisation.

This visibility enables companies to maintain lean operations, reduce unnecessary capital expenditure on excess equipment, and ensure pallets are being used efficiently across all locations. The result is a more streamlined supply chain with lower operational costs, reduced annual CapEx requirements, and improved resource allocation – all contributing to a healthier bottom line.

2. Autonomous Operations

completely automated, robotic processes, smart pallets allow for easier integration of autonomous or digital processes by providing real-time data and seamless communication between different components within and between warehouses.

Equipped with IoT sensors, RFID tags, Wiliot’s battery-free Bluetooth stickers, or GPS tracking, smart pallets are necessary for supply chains that are looking to embrace automation to help reduce costs or reach new sustainability targets.

3. Precise Temperature Control

For fresh and cold chain logistics, maintaining precise temperature control is critical. Smart pallets equipped with advanced temperature sensors provide real-time monitoring throughout the entire journey. These sensors continuously track and record temperature data, instantly alerting operators to any deviations that could compromise product quality.

By integrating with cold chain management systems, smart pallets create an unbroken record of temperature compliance, simplifying regulatory documentation and reducing product waste. This constant monitoring enables immediate intervention when temperature fluctuations occur, protecting valuable cargo and ensuring food safety from warehouse to delivery point.

4. Full Transparency

Smart pallets provide complete visibility across your supply chain, ensuring you always have accurate, real-time data on asset location, dwell times, and movement patterns. This level of insight helps optimise vehicle utilisation, reduce delays, and improve overall efficiency.

For industries like retail and fresh produce, smart pallets also support better stock management – helping to maintain product freshness in-store. With a digital passport for goods, businesses can track shipments nationally and internationally with confidence, ensuring compliance and traceability at every stage.

Here’s an extra point…

5. Futureproofing Your Supply Chain

AI in logistics is still in its early stages, but its impact is only set to grow. Adopting smart pallets today ensures your supply chain is ready to integrate future advancements as AI becomes more deeply embedded in operations.

With real-time tracking and IoT-enabled data collection, smart pallets provide the foundation for AI-driven decision-making, from automated demand forecasting to enhanced vehicle utilisation. The businesses that invest in these technologies now will be the ones best positioned to reap the benefits as AI continues to transform logistics.

Smart pallets have been evolving for the past decade and for those looking to reach new sustainability goals, make their supply chain safer, or reduce overhead costs of operations, smart pallets are the best place to start and thanks to new developments in other areas of logistics, their capabilities will continue to evolve going forward.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Digipal Plastic Pallets, get in touch with us today.