The Alternative Pallet Company, manufacturers of the award-winning paper pallet range, PALLITE, will be exhibiting at this year’s Movers & Storers Show for the first time.

As well as its range of paper pallets the company will be showcasing its revolutionary new heavy-duty collapsible box concept, which is expected to attract a lot of interest from the moving and storage industry.

The new generation boxes are manufactured from 25mm honeycomb fiberboard with the larger versions incorporating a paper pallet to aid handling by a pallet truck or fork lift. When not in use, the boxes can be easily collapsed flat for easy storage. The idea was inspired by an enquiry in 2016 from a moving company that had been contracted to remove and store a large quantity of archive files for a government department during a refurbishment programme.

PALLITE’s Sales Director David Rose explained. “There were hundreds of documents that had to be moved from an office in Wales to the moving company’s warehouse in Oxfordshire for temporary storage. The documents needed to be put into boxes for the journey, but once full they would be too heavy to lift safely and would have to be loaded onto a pallet and wheeled out using a pump truck. During the pre-move survey, it was realized that the doors in the building were too narrow to allow a standard pallet to pass through, so it would have to be unloaded and restacked at every doorway. Also, the corrugated boxes, once filled, would be so heavy, stacking in the removal vans would be difficult and likely to result in an unstable load.”

The team at PALLITE’s Wellingborough factory studied the problem and came up with a simple solution. Using the same 25mm board they manufactured for the paper pallets, the team designed a heavy-duty box that would just pass through the doorway and importantly, incorporated a paper pallet to allow it to be moved using a pump truck.

David continued, “The customer was delighted. Not having to man-handle the boxes through the narrow doorways saved an enormous amount of time and effort and in the end, money. The boxes were also very strong and this meant they could be stacked two-high during transport and while in storage. This resulted in fewer trips to and from Wales and saved valuable space in the warehouse.”

Since then, David and his team have met a number of moving companies to discuss how the PALLITE concept could be further developed for the industry, and so far, their reaction has been very positive. Already a box has been produced to ship and store a four-seater sofa, and other designs are in the pipeline.

Several examples of the new PALLITE, boxes will be on display on the company’s stand at The Movers & Storers Show on 8-9 November. 

Photo: David Rose with a heavy-duty collapsible box.