English
  • Spanish
  • German
  • Chinese

IKEA’s palletless shipping on Optiledge®


IKEA’s palletless shipping on Optiledge®IKEA has published its financial figures for the first time in its sixty-seven year history. The Swedish furniture group made a profit last year of €2.5 billion up 11% on the previous year. Turnover tipped the €23 billion mark – an absolute record.

Of course, the company's profitability cannot be fully attributed to palletless shipping, but it certainly played a role. The Swedish home furnishing giant currently uses loading ledges that are available for use by other companies under the brand name Optiledge®. The inventor of the plastic sections – patented in 2005 – is Allan Dickner, packaging manager at IKEA. On behalf of his employer, he was searching for a flexible and stackable alternative for heavy and environmentally unfriendly wooden pallets that would have a virtually unlimited usage lifetime.

Better loading density in sea containers

According to Dickner in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Ny Teknik ['New Technology'], shipping costs (not environmental considerations) were the initial driving force behind the development of the plastic load-bearing sections. 'We wanted to achieve a better loading density in our sea containers. This is why the new pallet not only had to be made of strong, lightweight plastic, but also had to have non-standard dimensions. 'Sea containers are manufactured according to US sizes and are not geared towards European pallets. We were looking to achieve better use of space in these sea containers. This was our initial approach.'

Optiledge®: Quick and efficient unloading of packaged goods

MSE-Forks responded swiftly to the launch of the Optiledge® by developing narrow, special-purpose RollerForks® for quick and efficient unloading of packaged goods from containers. Loading ledges are secured on each side of the product, but this can cause them to sag in the middle. Standard forklift trucks tines can be forced under sagging loads, but cannot place them on in-house pallets. They can also damage the goods. Patented RollerForks® can be inserted (rolled) effortlessly under the loads. The basic principle is that the upper rollers rotate at exactly the same speed, but in the opposite direction, as the lower rollers, which are in contact with a lower surface. When the RollerForks are lifted off the ground the rollers automatically lower and the load is held in place on the forks.



Source: www.nieuwsbladtransport.nl

Back