UK Plastic Manufacturing – The Plastic Pallet Box Lifecycle

Manufacturing outside the UK is usually a business’s biggest contributor to carbon emissions. Earlier this year, we announced that we moved our Plastic RTP (returnable transit packaging) manufacturing to the UK, an initiative to improve our sustainability efforts and further expand our product range for our customers.

Working With Industry Experts

Offering 80+ years of experience, R&D and an in-house recycling plant, IPL was chosen as our official trade moulding partner for their superb business model.  IPL manufacture across 16 manufacturing facilities with 6 plants in the UK and Europe.

Supporting this venture, Horen Group have designed the mould for our Plastic Pallet Boxes. Horen specialise in designing and manufacturing sustainable packing solutions. We are delighted to partner with Horen as we share similar values of optimising logistics efficiency while reducing the environmental impact. The company emphasises innovative, eco-friendly packaging to help businesses improve sustainability in their operations.

The Injection Moulding Manufacturing Process

Palletower’s Rigid Pallet Containers and Pallet Collars are moulded in Rotherham, one of the six IPL sites in Europe.

Injection moulding is a manufacturing process used to produce products by injecting molten plastic material into a mould, which cools and solidifies into the desired shape. This process is widely favoured for its efficiency in producing large volumes with high precision.

Key Steps in Injection Moulding:

Material Preparation: Granules of the High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) or Polypropylene (PP) are loaded into a hopper.

Heating and Melting: The granules are fed into a heated barrel, melted and transformed into a fluid state.

Injection: A screw or plunger mechanism pushes the molten material into the mould at high pressure.

Cooling and Solidification: The material cools within the mould, solidifying into the shape of the cavity.

Ejection: Once cooled, the mould opens, and the part is ejected from the mould, ready for finishing with runners.

Advantages of Injection Moulding:

• High Efficiency: The process produces parts quickly and is ideal for high-volume production.
• Design Flexibility: Moulds can be designed to create complex and detailed parts.
• Consistent Quality: Injection moulding provides uniform parts with high precision.

IPL are leading the way in the injection moulding process, making them the ideal partner in this new venture. Leveraging the expertise of Horen, leaders in the returnable and reusable packaging industry, we have worked together to design the moulding technology used to mould our RTP products.

What’s next?

With Steve Penney, Business Development Manager, on board to advance our plastic division, we are eager to develop new products alongside IPL for our customers.

Palletower’s unique advantage lies in maintaining substantial stock levels, ensuring prompt dispatch to support uninterrupted customer supply chains. Our continued partnership with IPL highlights a shared commitment to high-volume production without sacrificing quality.

This partnership has also highlighted many development opportunities for future products, starting with a recycled Rigid Pallet Box that could be used for food contact applications.

Steve Penney comments ‘Manufacturing high-quality RTP products in the UK, offers significant benefits to users in terms of sustainability with short supply chains, easy and quick access to the products and helps us to save our customers money’