With operating costs rising, and consumer demand at a constantly growing all-time high, it’s vital that every aspect of a successful supply chain is pulling its weight, supporting its users, and not infringing the infrastructure around it.
All of this comes at a time when sustainability is becoming a significant priority for organisations and for governments all over the world. Reaching sustainability targets often comes with costly investments that take a long time to fully take advantage of – and an even longer time to implement.
In December 2024, the EU introduced new legislation mandating several changes in packaging requirements to reduce single-use plastic and unnecessary packaging, which often ends up in landfill. But it also set a new binding re-use target, stating that 30% of all transport and sales packaging must be reusable by 2030 and 90% by 2040.
So, let’s run down the benefits adopting reusable plastic pallets will have for your business:
Sustainability
We’ll start with the most obvious one.
Plastic pallets are a much more sustainable choice compared to their wooden counterparts and that goes way beyond unnecessary deforestation. Plastic Pallets (like Digipal’s) are significantly lighter than wooden ones which, in large numbers, can have a huge impact on your Scope 1 and 3 emissions.
Consider this, a standard wooden pallet weighs around 30 kg which takes around 0.4854 kg/CO2 to transport over 100 miles – if a truck is carrying 100 pallets that’s ~48.54 kg/CO2 over 100 miles.
By reducing the pallet weight by just 10 kg (Digipal Plastic Pallets weigh under 20 kg), that cuts the emissions of 100 pallets over 100 miles to ~32.36 kg/CO2.
If you apply that to supply chains that operate across thousands of miles each day, that 16 kg reduction of CO2 emissions becomes a hugely significant impact on your operating emissions.
This same idea applies when considering space; the outdated design of wooden pallets means making space for them is difficult. Digipal’s Plastic Pallets are nestable, meaning you can fit almost 70% more pallets in the same space as wooden ones.
What this means for your supply chain is that fewer vehicles are required for transporting large numbers of empty pallets, reducing emissions and operating costs.
Cost Savings
Reducing unnecessary emissions often comes hand-in-hand with a reduction in operating costs. We’ve already discussed how replacing wooden pallets with reusable, nestable plastic pallets can reduce transport requirements and fuel usage – but nestable plastic pallets can save you significant space in your warehouses too.
The warehouse space you currently assign for storing wooden pallets can be drastically reduced or better utilised.
500 reusable plastic pallets take up the same space as 350 wooden pallets.
This means costly square footage can be freed up to make room for other processes or items in your warehouse and operations can be further streamlined.
The financial incentive goes beyond just the space and weight savings; because plastic pallets are designed for their reusability, they are far more durable than wooden pallets.
On average, wooden pallets have a breakage rate of 25% (1 in 4), whereas Digipal Plastic pallets have a breakage rate of just 1% (1 in 100). Replace and repair costs are much less significant and the time-cost factor that comes when wooden pallets break occurs much less frequently (if at all: 0.26% of pallets were damaged over two years for one of our clients).
Circular Economics
Modern supply chain operations are far-reaching and sprawling and wooden pallets often end up lost, stolen or broken. Because of this, tracking assets across your supply chain via wooden pallets is costly and trackers have to be installed on existing pallets in specific places to prevent them from falling off (though this still remains a possibility).
Since plastic pallets are stronger and, with Digipal, designed to be specially fitted with a custom tracker, asset leakage can be noticed quickly and pallets can be recovered with ease.
The biggest barrier to entry for many companies in adding or completely adopting plastic pallets in their supply chain is the initial cost of investment. That’s why many logistics operators have turned to Pallet Pooling, which utilises the principles of a circular economy to support the move to a supply chain that is less impactful on the environment and cheaper to operate.
Find out more about the true cost of pallet ownership here.
Smart plastic pallets with trackers allow for a more efficient pallet pooling operation. This means that pallet pooling can be cheaper for the logistics operators using the service and the pallet poolers offering it alike. Interested in learning more about recent developments in smart pallet technology? Click here.
By utilising pallet pooling, businesses can streamline their logistics operations by not having to factor in the costs (financial and sustainable) of reverse logistics and instead let the pallet pooler be in charge of recovery.
Order and Automation
Wooden pallets are standardised: 1 m wide, 1.2 m long, and 16.5 cm tall and it should weigh about 30 kg. The problem comes when wood splinters, rots, or cracks and breaks, or nails might end up jutting out the pallets or parts might not be fit properly. All of these make those standardised measurements very unhelpful and that’s without even mentioning that they could be made out of timber that’s a different weight.
Whether you’re introducing automation into your supply chain or you just want to make your staff’s lives easier, you need accuracy.
Digipal Plastic Pallets are made using a mould, all the same weight. That means processes and infrastructure can be built to factor in those sizes and weights down to the centimetre and gram.
For a more streamlined supply chain, where tiny infrastructure issues cause big problems, reusable plastic pallets are the sensible choice.
Regulatory compliance
“My supply chain doesn’t operate in the EU, so I shouldn’t worry about the change in regulation.”
It’s understandable why some might think this, but the EU often leads the charge on regulation, which is subsequently the rest of the world. It’s only a matter of time before these regulations (or similar) are brought to the UK, the US and beyond.
With governments all over the globe still aiming to reach net zero by 2050, introducing policy to cut any unnecessary emissions is on the horizon. But the benefits of embracing this technology today mean you can make any further changes to your supply chain operations.
Plastic pallets have already become a major part of many multi-national supply chains and, in the UK, several of the biggest retailers have already made the investment and seen hugely positive returns.
If you’re curious about how plastic pallets, pallet pooling or asset tracking can support your supply chain operations, get in touch with us at info@digipalsolutions.com.