Letter to the editor

Further to an article recently published in HSM by Go Plastic Pallets (www.hsmsearch.com/stories/articles/-/handling_storing/warehouse_safety/safety_first_in_the_warehouse/) The Timber Packaging & Pallet Confederation (TIMCON) would like to respond to a number of claims made about wooden pallets.

In the article, we believe that Goplasticpallets is suggesting that the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) believes plastic pallets are better and wooden pallets are unsafe. In reality, the HSE simply states that ‘unsafe or unsuitable pallets cause accidents.

Secondly, it uses the variability of strength in timber to call into question the reliability of pallets made from this material. Wooden pallets do vary in strength – but within a clearly defined band (referred to as coefficient of variation). A plastic pallets is indeed consistent – falling within a narrower coefficient of variation), and comparison places a plastic pallet well below the wooden one in strength. Load tests to official BS ISO 8611 standard prove this. Across a large groups of pallet designs, this typically would be as follows: timber pallets 900kg to 1,150kg; plastic pallets 600kg to 610kg.

Plastic pallets that mark by moulding in the safe load (SWL) on the deck or block of the pallet are acting in strict contravention of the BS and EN pallet standard. Indeed, all international standards condemn this practice, which is why CHEP and EPAL do not mark in this way and the HSE supports their British Standards Institution (BSI). Safe load should only be marked on the assembled unit load, so on the shrink wrap, so it is removed along with each load.

Kneejerk reactions to pallet collapse can result in wrong decisions by buyers, and misinformation such as this like this only encourages these poor, expensive and potentially dangerous decisions.

Stuart Hex, TIMCON secretariat.