IPP has forged stronger relationships with existing haulage partners as part of a strategic plan that is not only protecting jobs, but creating new positions and investment in trucks and equipment.
The hauliers, who provide the essential transport link in the circular economy by delivering, retrieving and repatriating pallets, have, in some cases, seen more than quadruple digit growth leading to the necessity to recruit additional drivers and invest in new materials handling equipment to manage demand.
Dunstable-based FA Hawkins Transport has seen a 1,000 per cent increase in volumes since it started working with IPP in 2007, while Wishart Transport NI, which covers Northern Ireland postcodes, has seen an almost 3,000 per cent rise, as it only started moving pallets in the Province two years ago.
Lincolnshire-based WR Carter and Sons, which covers many of the eastern UK postcodes, started work with IPP in 2010 with volumes for that year of nearly 6,000 pallet movements. Over the last eight years the volumes have increased by more than 17,000 per cent and in 2018 it moved more than one million pallets.
Carter’s managing director Adam Carter, said: “We have developed a really strong relationship with IPP because they trust us to do the work in a professional manner – it is well-oiled machine. The relationship has become such that we have taken on four new permanent drivers with two additional sub-contractors.”
Another hauler, TJ Moore TPT Ltd, based in Halesowen, near Birmingham, is one of the new transport organisations which joined the partnership in 2018 when it dealt with more than 70,000 pallets from a standing start.
“We’ve already had to take on another driver and a new truck,” said Steve Moore, whose business covers postcodes in Birmingham, Leicestershire and Derbyshire.
“The relationship we have with IPP allows us to be both flexible and responsive – it is a good fit for both businesses,” he added.
Both WR Carters and TJ Moore also deliver pallets into IPP’s brand new £2.5 million automated pallet inspection and repair service centre in Leicestershire, which will initially process more than three million reusable pool pallets each year.
The facility on the Interlink Business Park in Bardon Hill, Coalville, near junction 22 of the M1 has safeguarded 50 jobs and is the biggest IPP service centre of its kind in Europe, processing in excess of 700 pallets per hour – a capacity of an incredible six million each year.
IPP’s transport manager Wellington Nyatanga, who co-ordinates the pallets, said: “We are in the business of moving pallets in the circular economy but to achieve this, we have to be in the people business because we need to build strong and sustainable relationships with all our haulers. It is a reciprocal partnership that means that as we grow, they grow.
“They serve as IPP’s ambassadors to our manufacturing and retail clients, which means we place a lot of emphasis in developing deeper bonds with our existing transport partners to guarantee that reciprocal trust. They understand our business and the needs of our customers in the same way that we understand theirs.”
IPP is the only pallet pooler to be able to manufacture its own products, as well as retrieving, repairing and repatriating pallets. For more information, visit www.poolingpartners.com.
