Safety & Compliance
Safety
If people are involved, safety has to be the number one priority.
Pallets are critical to safety in processing, storing, and transporting products; especially when environments have racking, conveyors, automated palletizers, and products that are floor stacked multiple units high. To ensure the safety of your co-workers The Pallet Alliance will:
- Conduct an all-inclusive Safety Audit
- Optimize pallet design for the functional environment
- Create a reviewable paper trail by documenting how and why each decision was made
- Conduct follow-up Safety Audits to insure consistent compliance
Like many others, your safety concerns may extend into the environments of your customers such as retailers, warehouses, or factories. In these situations, TPAI can work with you and your customer jointly to incorporate their work environment into the pallet design as well.
In circumstances where your customer has a predetermined generic pallet requirement, TPAI can jointly work through your customer’s compliance parameters to develop an authorized exception process; in order to comply with your customer’s safety parameters, but at a lower cost than the prescribed generic design.
Customer-Specific Compliance
If you supply product to the pharmaceutical industry, chances are you were rapidly introduced to the growing world of customer-specific compliance.
TPAI verified and produced documentation attesting to the origin of pallet lumber within days for one of our National-Program customers throughout its 20 plants that supplied product to the pharmaceutical industry.
TPAI rapid response not only prevented supply-chain disruption, it earned TPAI’s customer recognition for its swift and documented compliance.
As procurement professionals well-know, some customers want or need specific attributes to be present or absent from the pallet you ship to them; which in many cases add cost or limit productivity to your product. TPAI can manage your customer-specific requirements and translate them into parameters that make sense in the market.
We can’t list all of the situations we can address because we’ll never know what requirement a customer may want next. However, we can tell you we understand the process of pallet manufacture and design from standing timber to delivered product, and if there is ANY way for a requirement to be fulfilled, we’ll figure it out in a way that gives you control and confidence!
Some Customer-Specific items TPAI has addressed in the past:
- ISPM 15 Compliance for Export
- Specific Wood species required or prohibited
- Absence of bark
- Wood origin to ensure absence of specific fungicides or insect infestation
- Address racking compliance issues
- Accommodation of material handling equipment in the warehouse matrix of our customer’s customer
Whatever the requirement is, TPAI will react quickly and accurately to satisfy it a way that optimizes performance and cost, as well as document why decisions were made and how they were implemented.
Export Regulations
When exporting products, the destinations need to be closely examined.
Most export destinations require ISPM 15 (International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures) compliance for your shipments to move smoothly across borders or through ports. However, some do not; and there is no reason to incur those costs if not required.
However … some countries, although presumably on board with ISPM-15 compliance, take things a bit further… (for example, no bark in addition to ISPM-15 treatment), and you need to be prepared for that!
The two methods by which wooden pallets are most usually made ISPM-15 compliant are:
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Heat Treating
Heat treating is a process in which pallets are placed in a kiln until the internal temperature of the wood reaches 133 °F and maintained for 30 minutes.
Once compliant, pallets are then marked with an ISPM-15 stamp that includes HT; indicating it has achieved compliance via Heat Treating. Below is an example of an HT ISPM-15 stamp.
Note: Do not confuse ISPM-15 compliant heat treating with kiln drying.
Kiln drying is a much longer process that removes moisture from the wood to create dimensional stability for furniture making and flooring. Even though kiln drying goes above and beyond the technical requirements of Heat Treating, a pallet must bear the ISPM stamp to be ISPM-15 certified and compliant. -
Fumigation.
Fumigation is a process by which pallets are enclosed in a chamber and fumigated with Methyl Bromide. Afterward, the pallets receive an ISPM-15 stamp that contains an MB; indicating that compliance was achieved through treatment with Methyl Bromide.
Below is an example of an MB ISPM-15 stamp
