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In just a few weeks, Ikea will enact a massive design change that will be largely invisible to consumers: They're ditching wooden shipping pallets in favor of cardboard ones. The furniture giant has designed a way to fold corrugated cardboard into a structure that is far thinner than a traditional wooden pallet, yet can still support the 1,650 pounds necessary to transport their goods. According to Bloomberg Businessweek,
One-third the height of wooden trays at 5 centimeters (2 inches) and 90 percent lighter at 2.5 kilos, they'll save thousands of truck trips and cut transport bills by 140 million euros ($193 million) a year at a cost of 90 million euros for paper purchases and new forklifts, Ikea says.
As Ikea uses some 10 million pallets a year, if the experiment is a success it's a good bet that other retail giants will take notice. But the thing that has analysts skeptical is that the pallets can only be used once. While they'll surely be recycled afterwards, perhaps on-site at each facility, this bucks the industry trend of "pooling," whereby used wooden pallets are collected by companies dedicated to the task who then redistribute them to other retailers, prolonging the pallets' lives. We're curious to see how the green balance shakes out on this one.
I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.
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Ikea's Cardboard Pallets Intrigue
And as for being a design blog, cardboard pallets are much easier to customize for a specific use than wooden pallets.
its actually very useful to people that import products, particularly in the food and beverage industry.
paper pallets are much lighter and can hold plenty of weight.
we usually custom designed each one to specific weight needs of the clients.
in a crush test of a 30 x 30 x 3cm sample of honeycomb paper board, it took 2.5 tons to break it
My current and previous job both involve moving heavy things on pallets. I'll need to see this to believe it.