Industries in all parts of the world are now thinking of replacing traditional transport packaging solutions made of wood and plywood with almost equal products made of substantially lighter and easily recyclable paper board.

The Finnish Eltete Group, a spearhead developer and manufacturer of pallets and transport boxes as well as other transport packaging products based on paper board, has its own factories in 15 countries and a sales network reaching in excess of over 60 countries.  “But since we can’t keep pace with the growing demand alone, we are also offering turnkey production lines for the open market,” said Marko Virtanen, Eltete’s Sales Director of Technology. “The beauty of our products is that they form a modular system. Dimensions and other specifications are easily adaptable according to the customers' demands.”

Eltete has been on the market for almost 40 years. The company started by producing edge boards to protect and support products and is now conquering the world with automatic lines producing paper board pallets at a pace of 10 or more pallets a minute.  Virtanen said: “When you combine a pallet with a transport box that both are made of carton and can take several tons, you can really talk about an environmentally friendly transport packaging solution.”

The package as a whole consists of honeycomb boards, stabilising edge boards with a couple of different profiles, glue and paper cores to stabilise the feet.  “It may sound easy, but in practice it is impossible to make similar products with the same quality and low price per unit without using our technology,” Virtanen claimed.

In the beginning of June Eltete shipped an automatic production line for producing paper pallets to a Japanese paper roll core manufacturer that is broadening its line of business into logistics.  “We have had a business relationship with the company regarding other products for a decade, but the new plant will be a totally new line of business for them,” Virtanen said. “With relatively small additions to the pallet production line it possible for them to manufacture boxes for example, since they will already have many of the production modules ready at hand.”

Eltete TPM Ltd (Transport Packaging Materials) is a global carton board converter and supplier of 100% recyclable TPM.  With 21 production sites in 15 countries, Eltete TPM is one of the leading producers of edge boards and advanced transport packaging solutions (TPS) in the world.  For more information visit: www.eltete.com.

Image 1: A paper pallet or box factory can be set up anywhere in the world and the only raw material needed is carton and glue.

Image 2: In the picture a pallet production line bound for Japan is tested in Eltete's premises in Finland before dismounting and shipping.