Technical Guidance

Frequently asked questions

For those with doubts about the advantages of plastic pallets, especially for users that are just starting to use them, we can answer your questions.

Advantages of plastic

Plastic is a highly versatile material and offers numerous advantages in different sectors and industrial applications.

  • More durable and with a longer life cycle: our plastic pallets have a very long life cycle during which they maintain their shape intact. Wood splinters, damaged loads and nails are elements of the past. It is estimated that the average duration of a plastic pallet is up to 5 times longer than the average duration of a wood pallet.
  • Recyclable: our products are 100% recyclable, avoiding disposal in dumping sites when they are damaged.
  • Reduction of logistics costs: Plastic pallets contribute to the reduction of fossil fuels consumption because of less weight. It is fact that if all wooden pallets were replaced by plastic pallets, millions of load kilograms which do not add value to the supply chain could be saved, representing huge savings in fuel for the carrier. Some of the models are fit-in variants, additionally reducing storage and transport costs when empty.
  • Lightweight, ergonomic and easy to handle: as our pallets weight less than wooden pallets, they are much easier to handle, thus reducing the risk factor and the possibility of harming users and premises.
  • RFID traceability: thanks to the insertion of a RFID tag during the assembly stage of our products, our customers are able to have their goods controlled throughout the whole supply chain without any variable cost, allowing also an easy and rigorous control of expiry dates and turnover.
  • Hygienic and immune to infections and parasites: our pallets do not need fumigations or chemical treatments of wood pallets to prevent infections. With a simple washing, the pallets are ready for the next use.
  • Less maintenance of the palletizing lines: our pallets do not deteriorate as fast as wood pallets. At it is logical, no splinters are left in the palletizing lines, thus reducing their maintenance.
  • Better visual impact: many wood pallets end up decorating the racks of many stores all over the world. Increasingly more attention is paid to the visual impact of pallets; the use of our plastic pallets will allow you presenting a good image of your company.
  • Customization: customizing the products either with a colour or with the company logo on demand is possible.
  • Resistance: plastic pallets are extremely resistant to any sort of condition, contributing excellent mechanical conditions in any situation (static, dynamic and rack load).

The reason most of the pallets are black

The vast majority of plastic pallets in the market are produced with recycled materials because of their excellent value for money. Also, the use of recycled materials for the production of plastic pallets confers to these materials a second opportunity with a high life cycle. In the same way, at the end of their life cycle these pallets will be recyclable again, and after their return to Nortpalet, will be recycled again in our facilities forming a closed and sustainable loop.

Recycled plastic is essentially the result of a recycling process in which different pieces of plastic that have become waste are washed, reduced to fragments and processed to form a new material that will be used again in a production process.

These recycle plastic pieces originally had different colour. For this reason, the mix tends to have dark colours, which are corrected during the manufacturing process adding black colorants to ensure a uniform colour.

Are there any alternatives to black pallets?

Plastic pallets can me manufactured on demand in any colour chosen by the customer, with a minimum order and production on demand. Thanks to the use of virgin materials, any colour is possible, and this colour can be kept unchanged overt time in different production batches like any other plastic piece. However, this option is sometimes very costly given the amount of plastic needed to produce a pallet and the high cost of virgin materials.

A more economical option is the use of recycled Premium materials, coming from the recycling of identical plastic parts, and of one single colour, which therefore retain the original color of the original products. By using these materials it is possible to obtain generic colors (red, blue, yellow, ...) that will have a variation in time and between different units depending on the original colors of the recycled pieces.

The most common colour for recycled materials besides black is grey.