Together from one pool

Those who do not buy containers and pallets but use them from a pool do not tie up capital and instead pay a fee for using the load carriers from a pool. The shared use of resources results in fewer CO2 emissions and therefore sustainable and environmentally friendly goods transportation. Saving money and protecting the environment at the same time - that sounds irresistible to most companies. Materialfluss asked five providers of pallet and container pooling to find out more about the advantages of pooling and how the individual providers differ from one another.

The Belgian provider Contraload claims to be the European market leader for the pooling of plastic load carriers in the B2B market. The fact that the company is still less well-known in Germany is due to the fact that around 250 of its 2,700 customers are currently based in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Contraload has its headquarters in Brussels and other locations in England, France and Spain. According to Erik Marinissen, General Manager DACH & Eastern Europe, Contraload has a customer network of around 700 loading points where cleaned load carriers are delivered and over 2,000 unloading points where empty load carriers are collected. Contraload manages more than 800,000 load carriers across Europe, which make more than four million round trips every year. With more than 10 years of experience, Contraload now wants to gain market share in the DACH region.

Next-generation tracking: tracking sales at the point of sale

When asked by Materialfluss about innovations, CHEP Manager Ertan Benzes points to the latest project: "We have set ourselves the goal of not only tracking promotions on the supply and demand side by using beacons (Bluetooth transmitters), but also actively supporting them." Promotion tracking was tested in a field trial and allows promotions to be monitored precisely. This is being hailed as the next stage of the digital revolution. Small transmitters, known as beacons, are integrated into the CHEP quarter range and thus become an interactive medium. "Together with the retail partner, you can react immediately if promotional goods from Milka or Oreo, for example, are not on the sales floor on time or if repeat orders need to be placed at short notice," says Alexander Knabe, Manager Order-to-Cash Germany and Central Europe at Mondeléz International. Customers can be addressed directly via the beacons. As soon as they are in the vicinity, the transmitter sends a signal to the Payback app on the customer's smartphone, which informs them about discounts and competitions, for example. The Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) developed the idea of using one of the locking slots on the CHEP pallet to permanently integrate the transmitter there, and the corresponding app was also developed by the Fraunhofer Institute's development team.

The topic of life cycle assessment is becoming increasingly important

Polymer Logistics is headquartered in Holland and has 20 pooling stations in Europe and is also represented worldwide - in the USA, South America, Australia, Asia and Africa. According to Klaus Lammers, Managing Director DACH + Benelux, several thousand customers use the pooling services of Polymer Logistics. The focus is on the consumer goods industry with 200 million movements per year worldwide, ten million of which are in the DACH region. Lammers observes that the topic of "eco-balance" and a systematic analysis of environmental impacts are becoming increasingly important. "The pool concept is playing an increasingly important role here with regard to the optimization of CO2 balances." Companies are opting for outsourcing because they "hand over the processes to specialists. This involves transport flow optimization, cleaning and hygiene issues as well as tracking and tracing, which the pool provider, such as Polymer Logistics, takes over for the client."

Sustainable business model

Pooling specialists provide services such as transport flow optimization, tracking & tracing, cleaning of load carriers and quality control. Photo: CHEP

CHEP also advertises that pallet pooling is a sustainable business model. As one of the largest providers in Germany, CHEP is represented worldwide with a pool of over 280 million load carriers and 500,000 delivery stations. Ertan Benzes, Marketing Manager at CHEP, comments: "A major advantage of CHEP pooling is the sustainability of the system: after each delivery cycle, the pallets are carefully inspected, repaired if necessary, washed and returned to the cycle. Our wood is FSC and PEFC-certified worldwide. Our parent company Brambles is listed in the Dow Jones Index of the TOP 100 most sustainable companies in the world." Benzes emphasizes the strong European network as a further advantage: "We deliver the load carriers to any location within 72 hours."

The Pooling Partners network has 10,000 pick-up and delivery stations in Europe. According to PAKi Managing Director Christian Kühnold, the participating companies come from the automotive industry, the shipping industry, freight forwarders and the retail sector. PAKi customers have access to 500 million Euro pallets and 20 million pallet cages in Europe. Kühnold: "Our share of the Euro pallet is small due to the size of the European pool of more than 500 million units and gives us room for further growth. In the last ten years, our business volume has quadrupled and 50 percent of our activities are handled abroad."

comepack is a German provider headquartered in Hirschberg an der Bergstraße near Mannheim, which has been providing services such as container management and pooling for over 20 years. comepack has twelve million returnable load carriers in circulation and five million in stock. The medium-sized company has 13 locations worldwide, including five service centers in Germany and others in France, Spain, Poland, China and India. According to Ralf Manger, Marketing and Sales Director, several thousand customers and their suppliers have access to KLTs, large load carriers and comepack's own containers - the Multipack series. The portfolio ranges from container cleaning and rental to transport organization.

Costs and effort at a glance

To illustrate the advantages of pooling, Polymer Logistics Manager Lammers has a striking example: "You are moving from Munich to Hamburg and need a Sprinter for the move. Is that why you buy a Sprinter? No. You rent one from a vehicle rental pool, receive the vehicle in Munich and return it in Hamburg. And you only pay for the time you use it. It's comparable to the load carrier pool: you get a load carrier in Munich, send it to Hamburg, and don't return it to Munich, but to Hamburg. The advantages are obvious." When asked how potential customers can find out whether pooling is cheaper, CHEP recommends the website http://www.powerofpooling.com, where you first have to register. However, CHEP manager Benzes also says: "Unfortunately, there is no universally valid calculation, as individual factors are decisive here. The quantity of load carriers, transit time and the proportion of national/international business play an important role."

Transparent costs are an important argument

Contraload offers an individual analysis of the requirements and all costs of the load carrier over the entire process and also aims to make all hidden costs transparent. The customer can then compare the "total cost of ownership" with the all-inclusive fee per load carrier offered by Contraload. The provider sees this payment concept as its unique selling point.

Less organizational effort

Pro pooling: load carriers from a pool are always available "just-in-time" and the costs of use are transparent. Photo: Contraload

Christian Kühnold also emphasizes the monetary benefits, as the customer does not have to contribute any capital, but also stresses that the organizational effort is reduced: "Complex tracking, different quality requirements, losses and difficulties in processing and coordination with empties partners are the problem for the customer. This is solved by PAKi's highly efficient pooling services. That pays off."

The Head of Marketing at comepack sees the reasons for companies opting for pooling in the lower investment and conservation of resources: "It makes sense to keep a container pool as small as possible due to the costs and effort involved. However, an individual customer and his suppliers hardly have the time for professional management. They will always have to keep more containers in stock to meet demand. With pooling, we supply customers from our nearest location, which results in significant savings of up to 40 percent in the transportation of empty containers alone compared to a self-managed container cycle."

On the trail of the containers

All providers offer software to keep track of the load carriers. comepack sees its unique selling point in the fact that it enables individual container tracking with its proprietary software. Via a multilingual web portal, the specialist offers the option of placing and managing empties orders, booking incoming and outgoing goods and creating reports. Manger emphasizes comepack's role as a container manager: "Our focus is on using the generated data and preparing it for the customer in the form of analyses, reports and recommendations. From this, we derive measures that make the operational performance of the reusable pool more efficient in the short and long term and keep it efficient."

Customers of CHEP, PAKi, Contraload and Polymer Logistics can also see where the load carriers are at any time. At CHEP, the load carriers are tracked throughout the entire cycle by means of EDI messages from customers.

PAKi-IT offers a flexible connection to various merchandise management systems. Kühnold: "All movements are recorded on a daily basis thanks to precise booking at the loading points, daily account management and online access for our customers, allowing customers to record orders 24/7 and track their stocks."

Marinissen from Contraload: "Our easy-to-use online system - Pool-IT - allows us and our customers to locate all load carriers at any time and thus avoid losses." Lammers from Polymer Logistics compares the account management with the payment flows at a bank. Every customer has online access to their load carrier account and empties account and also has various evaluation options.

Susanne Frank

Contact:

CHEP Germany GmbH

comepack GmbHwww.comepack.com

Contraload Benelux NVwww.contraload.com

PAKi Logistics GmbHwww.poolingpartners.com

Polymer Logisticswww.polymerlogistics.com/de