Europe’s polymer industry has operated a specialized pallet return system for nearly three decades. Its roots in the CP chemical pallet standard, combined with a highly dispersed customer base and unusually high pallet losses, help explain why pooling in this market looks very different from the grocery and consumer goods model familiar to many pallet professionals.
In a typical retail pallet rental pool, many suppliers ship standardized pallets into a relatively small number of large distribution centers. Europe’s polymer industry works almost in reverse.
PRS, or Pallet Return System, was established in 1997 at the initiative of the European polymer industry. Its pallets carry plastic resin from a relatively small number of producers to thousands of plastics converters across Europe and Turkey. That means longer cycle times, more recovery points, and a much bigger challenge simply keeping track of where pallets have gone. The system also has roots in a pallet standard that remains unfamiliar to many North American readers: the European CP, or Chemical Pallet, range.
From More Than 100 Pallet Designs to Nine CP Standards
The CP system grew out of an effort by the German chemical industry to simplify or harmonize its pallet requirements in the early 1990s. According to Rinus de Kok, Manager, New Business at PRS, chemical producers were using more than 100 customized pallet designs when the German Chemical Industry Association, VCI, began developing a standardized range.
Because chemical and polymer supply chains extend well beyond Germany, the specifications were subsequently adopted more widely through the European petrochemical industry (back then associated in APME, today Plastics Europe), effectively becoming an industry standard. Several of the CP designs used to carry plastic granulates were also good candidates for repeated use. Specifications for those pallets, particularly designs related to CP4, CP7 and CP9, were strengthened for reuse and became the basis for the PRS range.
Faber Group, parent company of PRS, developed the network needed to collect, repair, manage and redeliver the pallets. Under the PRS model, pallets remain the property of the pool operator and are hired by plastics producers rather than sold with the product.
De Kok said the original motivation was primarily economic. Cost savings still matter, but pallet quality, supply reliability, carbon reduction and compliance with emerging European packaging requirements, including the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, or PPWR, have become increasingly important.
CP Pallets at a Glance
- CP means Chemical Pallet. The system was developed by the European chemical industry in the early 1990s to replace more than 100 specialized pallet designs.
- There are nine CP formats, CP1 through CP9, designed around packaging such as bags, drums, octabins and FIBCs.
- PRS and CP are not the same thing. PRS developed reusable pool pallets from CP designs that were particularly well suited to polymer distribution.
- PRS operates several principal formats, including PRS4, PRS6, PRS7 and PRS9.
- The system serves a highly dispersed market, potentially involving as many as 15,000 converter locations across Europe and Turkey.
A Pooling Network With the Funnel Pointed the Other Way
De Kok describes conventional retail and FMCG pooling as convergent. Many consumer goods producers ship pallets into a comparatively small number of retailer distribution centers. Polymer distribution, on the other hand, is divergent. A relatively small number of plastics producers supply a very large population of converters.
That difference has a major impact on pallet recovery. Retail pallets often accumulate at large, predictable collection points. PRS pallets can finish their loaded journey at any of thousands of converting plants, some receiving large volumes and others only occasional shipments.
PRS says its network can involve as many as 15,000 converter locations across Europe and Turkey. Approximately 40 depots and hubs provide regional collection, sorting, repair, storage and repositioning. About 30 external pallet manufacturers supply new pallets to replace losses. Procurement and quality management are centrally controlled, with regional personnel supporting audits and local operations.
Distributors make the recovery job even more complicated. Polymer producers may sell through intermediaries serving smaller customers, particular regions or specialized converting markets. Those distributors know where the resin is ultimately delivered, but that customer information can be commercially sensitive. For PRS, however, that is also the information needed to recover the pallet.
De Kok estimates that distributors account for about 20% of palletized polyolefin flows, although their share can reach 40% for some other polymers. PRS has developed confidentiality agreements and distributor contracts to gain access to destination information, but some pallets moving through distribution remain effectively invisible to the pool. In those cases, the first problem is not how to collect the pallet. It is finding out where it went.
Four Pallet Types Add Another Balancing Challenge
PRS also differs from pools built largely around a single pallet footprint. PRS4, PRS6 and PRS7 are used primarily for resin packed in 25 kg form-fill-seal bags, while PRS9 is associated with octabins. De Kok estimates that 85% to 90% of relevant product is shipped in FFS bags, with octabins accounting for most of the remainder and FIBCs representing only a small share.
PRS6 and PRS7 together account for approximately 60% of the pallet mix, PRS4 about 30% and PRS9 roughly 10%. That creates another operational challenge. Recovered pallets have to be repositioned to producers that need that particular design. When PRS introduces a new pallet type or brings a new customer into the network, it has to consider where the pallets will originate, where they are likely to accumulate, and how they will get back into circulation.
Why an Industry That Makes Plastic Still Uses Wood Pallets
The material question is an obvious one. If the customers themselves manufacture plastics, why operate the pool with wood pallets? PRS has looked at that question directly.
In 2019 and 2020, it worked with a leading plastic pallet manufacturer through the Polyolefin Circular Economy Platform to evaluate a reusable plastic pallet as a possible replacement for CP7/PRS7 wood pallet flows. According to de Kok, matching the required functionality and robustness called for a substantial plastic pallet costing approximately four to five times as much as wood. That turned out to be a challenge.
PRS estimated loss rates in the polyolefin network at roughly 40% to 50%. Under the conditions evaluated, de Kok said a plastic pallet started to become more attractive economically and environmentally when losses fell to about 5% to 10%. At actual PRS loss levels, he estimated the plastic pallet’s trip cost could be three to four times that of wood.
Those figures should not be taken as a universal wood-versus-plastic threshold. They reflect the conditions in this particular network. But they demonstrate one of the central realities of pooling: what matters is not how many trips a pallet can theoretically make, but how many trips it actually completes before it disappears from the system. A higher-cost pallet can make sense when it stays inside a tightly controlled network. PRS faces a very different situation.
Some Pallet Loss Is Built Into Polymer Distribution
Export is a major source of loss. Polymer producers often palletize product for stock before the final customer or destination is known. That makes it difficult to separate pallets that will stay within the European PRS network from those that will ultimately be exported.
Depending on the polymer type, de Kok estimates that exports outside the PRS geography can represent 10% to 50% of the business. Once those pallets leave for another continent, they are effectively lost to the pool.
Leakage also occurs within Europe. Used pallet traders may acquire PRS pallets from converters and redirect them elsewhere. Across thousands of end-user locations, small losses quickly add up.
Reducing export leakage would improve the case for a higher-cost pallet, but de Kok said that alone would not be enough. Losses within Europe would also have to come down substantially.
Wood Also Fits the Repair Network
Wood has another advantage in a geographically dispersed system: it can be repaired almost anywhere. De Kok noted that wooden pallets can be inspected and repaired with basic equipment and skills widely available throughout Europe. Plastic pallets may require more specialized inspection, welding, recycling or other processing. That can mean moving damaged pallets greater distances before they can be repaired or handled.
Washing infrastructure presents a similar issue. Europe has considerable capacity for washing reusable plastic pallets, crates and other load carriers, but much of that capacity serves food-related systems. Industrial plastic pallets may not be accepted at facilities operating under food-safety certification requirements.
The loads themselves are also demanding. De Kok cited palletized weights of around 1.4 tonnes, along with the stiffness required for warehouse racking. Meeting those requirements can push a reusable plastic pallet toward more material and higher cost.
None of that means PRS considers itself permanently tied to wood. “We’re a pooler, not necessarily a wood-pallet pooler,” de Kok said. If a plastic pallet can provide the required functionality and safety, circulate in a network with very low losses and deliver a competitive cost per trip, PRS is open to using it.
For North American pallet professionals, PRS is useful partly because it demonstrates how much pooling economics can change when the structure of the supply chain changes. The CP pallet standards supplied a common platform, but the return system had to be designed around a market characterized by thousands of delivery locations, distributor involvement, multiple pallet types and substantial export leakage.
But even more importantly: North American polymer producers can benefit from PRS for their exports to Europe in order to comply with PPWR.
Ultimately, PRS has spent nearly three decades solving a pallet recovery problem that looks very different from retail pooling. That difference explains many of the choices behind the system, from pallet design and depot structure to why an industry built around plastics continues to rely heavily on wood.
Rick LeBlanc, EMBA, is the founder and editor of Reusable Packaging News (subscribe to the free newsletter) and editor of Western Pallet Magazine. A supply chain journalist with more than 30 years of experience, he specializes in pallets, reusable packaging, material handling and related operations. Rick is co-author of Pallets: A North American Perspective and Pallets & Progress: A Collected History of Pallets and Palletized Handling 1922–1945. He is also an advisory board member of the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. Read Rick’s full bio.
