File photo: Europool System crates on LPR palletGuaranteeing the quality, quantity and availability of pallets is a considerable challenge for major accounts such as William Saurin. After years of using exchange pallets to manage the transport of its products, this well-known French food processing company called on La Palette Rouge (LPR) to set up a system based on pooled pallets. Thanks to the efficiency of this new system and LPR’s constant support, William Saurin has achieved significant savings, combined with vital service continuity.
For William Saurin, a world-renowned food group and owner of the Garbit, PetitJean and Panzani brands, product quality is an absolute priority.“We regularly handle nearly 180,000 (pallet) movements a year,” explains David Caron, William Saurin’s Logistics and Warehouse Manager at the Group’s logistics site in Épaux-Bézu (Aisne départment). “We now wish to move to a new format to ensure approximately 230,000 to 240,000 movements in the coming years.” A paradigm shift that requires “ever more quality and practicality, which is why we called on LPR”.
In total, nearly 90,000 tonnes of products are shipped each year. Hence the problem of guaranteeing optimal quality of pallets returned after the products have been delivered. However, exchange pallets are sometimes replaced by pallets of inferior quality, a problem that inevitably degrades the average quality of the pallet pool, which, he says, “doesn’t happen with leased pallets. We benefit from LPR’s contractual commitment concerning the quality of the pallets we get back.”
Another problem is the time spent by carriers, who tend to favor customers working with one-way rental pallets during particularly busy periods. Above all, the objective was to better meet the needs of increasingly automated warehouses. “During busy periods, there is a shortage of transport, causing difficulties in managing exchange pallets because they are very restrictive for carriers,” points out Hervé Fourcade, Commercial Director of LPR France.
Refocusing on its core business
William Saurin introduced this system in February 2018 and stands ready for the busiest time of the year. The company has worked with LPR for almost ten years and has always benefited from “the serious approach, quality, availability and responsiveness of La Palette Rouge, as well as from the precise tracking of all pallet movements. As soon as an order is placed, shipping movements are generated automatically and all the information is available on the Web platform.”
“Freeing ourselves from these constraints allows us to refocus on our core business,” Caron adds. In addition, William Saurin no longer has to track the pallets, a tedious operation that required each movement to be recorded. Finally, the site saved a considerable amount of time by no longer having to deal with loading and unloading. As a result, employees were freed up to perform other duties.
About LPR-La Palette Rouge
LPR-La Palette Rouge, a division of Euro Pool System Group, is a pallet-pooling company for manufacturers and distributors in the fast-moving consumer goods sector. LPR operates throughout Europe, providing a full pallet service to its customers and their retail partners. The company manages more than 83 million pallet movements per year throughout Europe. www.lpr.eu
About Euro Pool Group
Euro Pool Group is the European leader in logistics services for returnable packaging in the fresh produce sector. Euro Pool Group is composed of two divisions, Euro Pool System (EPS) and La Palette Rouge (LPR). www.europoolgroup.com