Recent decisions by multi-national blue chip companies regarding use of wood pallets should serve as a warning to the timber packaging sector to unite and fight its corner, according to Gil Covey, the UK-based president of the European Federation of Wooden Pallet and Packaging Manufacturers.
Mr Covey said IKEA’s recent decision to replace its wooden pallets in Europe with a plastic ledge product combined with corrugated paper pallets was a danger warning the industry should heed, especially as the plastic pallet sector in the US had embarked on a campaign of “misinformation” about wood pallets.
In December, leading drug maker Pfizer issued a further product recall of its Lipitor medicine – 19,000 bottles – after a customer complained of a strange odour, which the company has confirmed as 2,4,6 tribromoanisole, a chemical used as a wood preservative for timber pallets.
Pfizer has now recalled around 375,000 bottles of the drug since last August because of the issue and has already decided to transport empty bottles by plastic pallets.
Though the treatment is not used in the US and Europe, Mr Covey said the development, combined with similar recalls by Johnson & Johnson, was a wake-up call for the timber packaging sector.
“There’s absolutely no proof this was caused by the pallets, it could be caused by the packaging,” he said.
“But these are very important developments. If people can’t see a danger when a Scandinavian company like IKEA makes a decision like this with pallets then I don’t know what it takes to get the message through. There are major issues we have to deal with and we have to organise ourselves and spend some money.”
“People who are moving goods will move them one way or another. We’d like to see more support from sawmills and the forest industry. We are asking for their support, because it’s in everyone’s interest.”
