Pall-Ex plans for growth

Pall-ex this week went live with its Scandinavia pallet network, and outlined other ambitious projects it is launching, including a new £10m purpose built hub.
Alan Cramley, company director of marketing, says ‘we are faily close to launching Pall-ex Italia, and are in discussions in Germany, Austria, France Spain and Benelux. Its a very exciting time for Pall-ex.‘
‘The european networks run on exactly the same principle as the UK company, and in order to help with our European and longer UK trunking we are considering the possibility of adding a railhead to our new site.‘
A new 18,600 sqm hub situated in Leicestershire at J22 of the M1, will be running in March. It will have 44 loading bays, a forklift truck service centre, and 2,232 sq m of office space, including facilites for customers. It will also offer benefits for drivers with a lorry park, drivers rest area, 24 hour canteen and showers.
‘The site is in stark contrast to the portable acommodation unit we started in,‘ says Cramley. Pall-ex will maintain its existing facilities in Gotham to provide a warehousing service, an area of the business it says it is keen to develop.
The company is also looking at providing its members with group procurement offers, particlularly for tyres, fuel and insurance. ‘If we group all of our members together we have a lot of buying power.‘
Depots are trialling a new barcode and PoD scanning system, which will be rolled out to members and should be linked to the companys website by December.
The developments come as pallet networks are experiencing an unusually early high demand for their services. Hilary Sharples, Pall-ex md says: ‘There has been no plateau; usually there is a fall but not this year. It might be explained by the collapse of some of the newer and smaller networks.‘
Sharples said she would not like to be starting up now because ‘all the good hauliers are already members of the big 3 networks‘.