The pallet manufacturing industry is being urged to adopt more environmentally friendly methods, such as cutting the amount of timber in pallets or using more returnable pallets, to reduce the impact of rising timber prices across Europe.

John Dye, president of the Timber Packaging and Pallet Confederation (Timcon), said the sector was “crying out for some stability” after having been hit hard by soaring timber prices in Europe over the past 12 months.

“At the moment, we’re expecting some smaller price increases, nothing along the lines of what we’ve seen this past year,” he said. “[But] we don’t think the price is likely to go down any time soon.”

With raw materials accounting for 75% of the price of a pallet, Dye said any saving on the volume of timber used in pallets would be beneficial.

As well as reducing the amount of wood, manufacturers are also looking at reconditioning pallets and offering repair services.

Another option is to use a pool of returnable pallets, such as that run by CHEP, which has more than 120 million pallets across Europe.

“Apart from reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill, this recycling ethos enables us to minimise the impact of any timber price increases,” said Christophe Loiseau, a senior vice-president at CHEP Europe.

One of the consequences of the timber price rises is that pallet manufacturers are unable to guarantee customers long-term prices, and they are also spending a lot of time considering different construction methods to reduce costs.

“What would be really useful would be a standardised pallet size for all our customers,” added Dye.