Pallets are everything at the T&A Company in Emmerich
Approximately 40,000 cubic metres of wood are converted into pallets every year on the site of a former brickyard in Emmerich. In summer 2003 Dutch Faber Halbertsma Group founded the T&A Paletten GmbH in the Rhineland town and since then has supplied customers for a radius of 250 kilometres with steadily growing success.
"Pallets are exciting business" enthuses assistant boss Michael Rau. "Simply everything has to be right: purchasing the best raw materials, automated production, good management and teamwork by all concerned". The softwood from which the Emmerich factory pallets are made comes primarily from forestry operations in Belarus, the Ukraine, the Baltic, Poland and Russia. "We only buy from enterprises that guarantee to replace stocks", reports Michael Rau. The Faber Halbertsma Group - with a total annual consumption of 500,000 cubing metres of wood - received a Greenpeace award in 2002 for its raw materials policy. In the manufacture of the wooden product carriers strict attention is paid to the fact that no toxic substances are used so that food or medicament transportation involves no hazard for end consumers. An ingenious automation system - high-tech robots are used in Emmerich - ensures maximum flexibility with regard to pallet dimensions.
At T&A Paletten GmbH in Emmerich not only new pallets are manufactured, but used pallets are repaired - and so-called pallet pooling is in operation. The principle is called "hire not buy". Behind the pallet-pooling system lie a sophisticated logistical concept and a complex tariff system that optimises the cost-value ratio for suppliers and customers. Admittedly not all customers can participate in pallet pooling. Hence for example if pharmaceutical companies are legally obliged always to use new pallets and the paper sector again and again needs new formats and if sometimes it is not know where pallets end up at the end of a supply chain, For example in the case of overseas transportation.
Faber Halbertsma Group decided in favour of the Emmerich site - as against alternative sites in neighbouring countries amongst other things - for several reasons. Michael Rau: "Emmerich and Kleve District Business Development Association campaigned hard for us and granted all the approvals in an unbureaucratic manner, there are enough industrial sites and workers here an the logistics connections, with its well expanded road network are ideal for us". T&A are currently checking whether transportation via the Rhine would be an economic proposition. The typical sector radius of operations of some 250 kilometres around the location additionally means that 50 percent of total European economic power can be comfortably reached. Not only are the management pleased about these advantages, but also the some 70 employees of T&A Paletten GmbH.
Information: www.tunda.de
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