Alliance closes European circle for pallet clients
Pallet network Pall-Ex has formed a strategic alliance with Hellmann Worldwide Logistics to give its members and customers pan-European coverage.
Pall-Ex has existing partners in Germany, Scandinavia and Spain and has been trunking into Europe on an ad hoc basis. From 2 August, it will offer a scheduled five-nights-a-week service available for quarter, half and full pallets.
Pallets will be consolidated in the usual way each night at the Pall-Ex hub in Leicestershire and transferred to Hellmann’s Lichfield hub for an early morning departure to the global logistics group’s European gateway hub at Niederaula, 100km north of Frankfurt. From there they will be delivered to final European destinations, giving a door-to-door service in 48 to 96 hours, PallEx marketing manager Chris Martin said.
“We’ve been trialling the service for six months.
We have long-standing arrangements with our international partners, but services have been ad hoc. With a regular flow of pallets at a competitive rate, we will expect rapidly to be filling a double-deck trailer.” POD images will be available via the web on the day after delivery.
Doug Overett, UK operations director for Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, said the company had seen steady month-on-month growth in traffic since March.
“Following the closure of our parcel business last December we lost some feed from our domestic partners, but we have been regaining clients.
“The Pall-Ex development runs parallel to our own development of a European product: we are continuing aggressively to sell our own HWL services directly into the market.
“We have been working with Pall-Ex, but not exclusively because they are in pallets and we are primarily groupage, ” Overett added.
“We’re already in discussion with them about an economy service.”
Posted: 26/07/2004
