Pacific Asia Region
The pallet concept was exported from the USA in a big way to Australia in 1942 with the military 42 inch square, 2-way bearer pallet which has endured even today with the most popular Australian pallet size still the hardwood 42 x 42 inch (1065 x 1065mm). The Australian Standard 1065 x 1065mm is a pallet size commonly found in Australia but rarely found elsewhere. It fits perfectly in the RACE container of the Australian Railway, but is ill suited to fitting in the standard ISO containers used around the globe, the other common size is the 1100 x 1100mm.
Korean Pallet Pool plastic
1100x1100 pallets
That was one reason why the square pallet dominated the Far East for so long. Small variations were made and the 1100 x 1100 square pallet met ISO 6780 and is the most popular size in the far East though there is now competition with the 1200 x 1000 size pallet since so much exporting is done by the Far East into Europe and the USA. The China National Logistics Standardisation Committee carried out a survey in 2005 and this showed that in China 1200 x 1000 accounted for 27.8% and 1100 x 1100 for 26.4%. Europe and the USA cannot easily integrate the 1100 x 1100 into their pallet systems in that they will not fit safely into beam racks which are largely designed for 1200 x 1000 pallets.
The volume of plastic pallets in use is higher in this part of the world than Europe or the USA and is in part because there is less indigenous timber. For the substantial timber pallet volumes large imports have to be made, typically of radiata pine from New Zealand. The Asia Pallet Pool APP uses as its main pallet size the T11 pallet originally specified by the Japanese Industrial Standards body (JIS) and T11 operates in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam. T11 is a 2-way flat wooden or plastic pallet specification of 1100 x 1100 x 144mm, loading capacity 1000kg, reversible or non reversible. T11 is also included in the published standards of countries such as Singapore/SS 334, Thailand, Japan/JIS Z0601, Korea/KS A2155 and Australia/AS 2068.
The pallet is unusual in that the reversible option for users means that no pedestrian pallet trucks can be used. It also conflicts with ISO 6780 since access for pedestrian pallet trucks is a rule for compliance with ISO 6780: 2003 "Flat Pallets for inter-continental materials handling - principal dimensions and tolerances". The advantage is that the full bottom deck means block stacking creates less damage to stacked goods. STAP11 is sometimes quoted in the region, this is an acronym from “Spreading T11 in the Asia Pacific region”. STAP11 sets out to promote wider use of the T11 pallet standard. It is considered that T11 is the most versatile pallet in this area and with a typical small unit load overlap it is a good choice for freight container fit.
For goods shipped to Europe the Europallet is often now required by customers and the European Pallet Association (EPAL) which controls the quality of Euros in Europe is now represented in Australia. During 2007 the first pallet company in Australia was granted a licence for the production and repair of Europallets in Oceania. The inspection company SGS is in charge of performing quality control.
The Japanese pallet and packing standards listed below are widely used in Asia Pacific, no doubt helped by being published in English. It is sometimes not appreciated by Europeans that the common language of contracts and trade in the Pacific-Asia region, in countries such as Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong is English. This has obviously been stimulated by Australia and New Zealand which do considerable business with the area. Exporters/importers have found that if they require shippers in the region to work to Japanese or Singapore Standards, then these standards on pallets, cases, crates, and dockside handling equipment need to be available in English.
Such standards can be of great value to Europeans whether or not shipping to that region, for example the two Japanese export timber packing case standards are, in our view, one of the most comprehensive design aids available in any country. Singapore for example has an informative domestic pallet standard covering local and international sizes and published in English.
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