
Hopes for pallet growth; but fear over rates.
Far from reaching their peak, pallet networks still have much traffic to go after. The sector needs to talk up inherent efficiencies more strongly, TPN chairman argues. Pallet networks “have a very large market still to attack”, says Richard Eldred, chairman and co-founder of The Pallet Network. A study this year had shown that the market share of all networks was 4.8% and revenues total GBP528m in 2004; but forecast an increase to 13.5% market share and revenues of GBP1.65bn in 2008. He told the UK Express Delivery conference organised by Triangle in Birmingham last week that reports of complaints from some large distribution contractors that customers are becoming too demanding on timed deliveries is “great news for networks”. Network members have a great story to tell about how the networks have taken the cost out of pallet distribution and been able to pass on much of that to customers; they should be even more pro-active in telling that story, he said.
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