Nestable, Stackable and Hygienic

Pallets Made of Recycled Material at Gerresheimer Glass Inc.: Gerresheimer is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high-grade specialty glass and plastic products for the international pharmaceutical and health care industry. For glass production at Gerresheimer Glass Inc. in Chicago, the decision was made to transition from wood to plastic pallets.

The Requirements

The three IS machines in the Gerresheimer factory in the Chicago suburb of Chicago Heights produce 750,000 bottles daily – 750,000 orange-glowing pieces of glass that are cooled, checked, packed into small loads, wrapped, and finally stacked onto shipping pallets. Depending on bottle size, which varies here between five milliliters and 1.0 liters, at the end there are 500–35,000 bottles on one pallet.

Gerresheimer's transition from wooden to recycled-plastic pallets can be attributed to a proactive approach: They wanted to spare their clients the expensive step of reloading glass from wooden pallets onto their own clean plastic pallets with every load. That is because many of the bottles go on to clients in the pharmaceutical industry, which has the highest hygienic standards and cannot afford to allow any wood or the problems that come with it (dust, fibers, bugs, etc.) into its supply chain.

The Solution: Nest US5.1

The decision to go with our Nest US5.1 with attachable skids was unanimous. Stability and high load-bearing capacity with concomitantly low cost of transportation and storage thanks to the nesting ability were convincing. The loaded pallets can be double stacked even after the skids are mounted.

Logistics manager Scott Schager explains that, "Of course, like any other company, we also look at the costs first. With the Nest US5.1, we have relatively low costs and a high degree of stability, particularly when we want to stack them for export. This pallet works well with all of our products."

As a logistics expert, Scott Schager summarizes the advantage of the pallets for his business: "For sending in containers, but also for storage, we need to be able to stack the glassware pallets, so we need pallets with skids. At the same time we want to keep the dead freight costs as low as possible. So the nestability of the Nest US5.1 accommodates us well. The skids are attached here by a service provider before they are actually used and so we have the benefit of pallets that are both stackable and nestable at the same time."

Gerresheimer Glass in Chicago is currently shipping 50% of its total output on our plastic pallets. And the company wants to increase that percentage significantly in the future.

Facts

 

 

Facts

Nest US5.1

Dimensions: 1219 x 1016 x 150 mm
Weight: 14.0 kg

Top deck: open (OD)

Bottom support: 5 runners (5R), attachable
Material: recycled PO

Load capacities:

Static: 8000 kg

Dynamic: 2400 kg 

Racking: 600 kg



Safety rim: 6 mm

Further Details