www.truckandtrack.com Spring 2025 Truck and Track 45 PALLET NETWORKS 2024 saw strong but controlled growth for UK pallet networks, across all pallet sizes and services. The UK’s eight Pallet Networks delivered a total of 29.3m pallets throughout the year, 3.2% up on 2023. Association of Pallet Networks (APN) chairman Paul Sanders says: “Steady manageable growth is exactly what our Members need as this shows that the UK’s freight owners have fully recovered both in economic terms and in predictability of their order books from the fluctuations of COVID. The intense inflationary pressures which have threatened to depress the wider market more recently have increased costs for networks and customers, but have not significantly suppressed demand.” Other key figures for 2024 include: ■ Service levels remain consistently high with 96% intact, in full and on-time deliveries. ■ 2024 growth in next day volumes of 3.0% for full pallets, 3.1% half pallets and 3.7% for quarter pallets. ■ Full pallets accounted for 49% of volume, half pallets 29% and 22% quarter pallets. ■ Next day volumes accounted for 62% with economy 38%, which is a slight shift away from economy services and towards premium. ■ Consignment numbers grew by almost 3% in 2024, consolidated by 4.3% growth in the fourth quarter. The average number of pallets per consignment remained at 1.43. ■ Average pallet weight rose slightly to 370kg, bucking a multi-year trend in which weight had consistently fallen year-on-year. ■ Home delivery grew by one percentage point, year-on-year, in terms of overall volume, with 15.5% of all pallets delivered to residential addresses (B2C) in 2024. More than half of residential deliveries are delivered on a next day service. Safety The APN Health and Safety Forum has a relentless focus on Hub safety, which has resulted in six years of continuous improvement in the incident rate. However, 2024 saw a slight increase for the first time since 2018. Safety incidents increased by almost 20% year on year. However, this was compared to a very low rate of injury in 2023. The incident rate for 2024 was 0.42 per 100,000 pallets, which is still lower than 2022 or any previous year. Sanders says the work of the Health and Safety Forum, which has rigorously pursued best practice and employee education throughout the past several years, is once again deserving of credit. “We constantly work towards eliminating harm during network operations. This is not an easy ask, as network Hubs are probably one of the busiest logistics operations, cross docking tens of thousands of pallets from hundreds of vehicles each weeknight. Nonetheless, our focus on safety has once again delivered a better safety environment than we enjoyed in any year prior to 2023. We are extremely proud of that and would like to congratulate the members of the H&S Forum, who each represent their network and work together to make our operations safer.” The majority of safety incidents at pallet network Hubs involve curtains, straps and restraint systems. For full details of the year’s results please see our Annual Report. www.theapn.co.uk Paul Sanders, Chairman of the Association of Pallet Networks Pallet networks see steady growth across the board in 2024 TRUCK & TRAILER SOLUTIONS WELCOME TOALLPORTS GROUP allportsgroup.co.uk
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTE1MTA=