Warehouse Archives - HEC Holland

Pallets made of wood fiber

HEC-Holland is always looking for environmental solutions and ways to reduce its carbon footprint. A few months ago, we started testing wood fiber pallets in our warehouse in Tilburg. These pallets are seen as a possible environmental friendly substitute to the normal wooden pallets.

These pallets have both environmental- and logistical advantages. The first advantage is in the material of the pallet. By compressing the wooden fibers into the desired dimension, we can load our containers more efficiently and leave less space “un-used”. Additionally, this material is made from wasted wood, This means that our pallets are made of 100% recycled material and can be recycled again when they are at the end of their lifespan.

Next to the material, the form of the pallets makes it possible to stack the pallets. By stacking these pallets we need 70% less room, compared to the standard wooden pallets. This means that the transportation of the pallets is more efficient, which means less carbon emission since we are doing less transportation. Besides transportation, it also leads to less space needed in our warehouses.

Finally, our pallets are safer for our staff, our client’s staff and the products. In these pallets, no nails or sharp edges will be found, which traditional pallets might have. These could damage the product

Conclusion

So, when looking at the previous points we were convinced we should further investigate in the possibility of using the pallets. They are not just used for our light weighted products, but are also used for the more heavy loads. We are monitoring this testing process and are convinced that these pallets could replace the standard wooden pallets for some of our products. Next to this project, we are always looking into innovations and developments which can help us to be more aware of the environment. If you are familiar with environmental solutions, you can always get in contact with us.

Movement from Goch to Tilburg

HEC-Holland is still growing fast, also during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, we were forced to move from our small warehouse in Goch to a much larger warehouse in Tilburg. In this new warehouse we are able to place more slitting machines and we can store more products. In addition, the warehouse includes a large office space with all facilities, where we can meet our suppliers and customers. The location of our warehouse is fantastic, as it is just a few minutes from Barge Terminal Tilburg. Moreover, Tilburg has a direct train connection with central Europe and Asia. We are very happy with our new warehouse in Tilburg: the logistics hotspot of the Netherlands.

Expansion of production capacity

The growth of our company has, among others, led to the expansion of our production capacity. We have our own slitting facility since one year now, however we are close to full capacity. For this reason, we are looking for new slitting machines. One year ago, we could not imagine that we already have to look for these new machines. The slitting facility that we have now, is for slitting water blocking tapes. We are now in the process of buying a new machine that can slit aluminum tapes, so that our production department can convert locally. This process was intended for one year ago, but unfortunately we had to postpone this due to corona. Nevertheless, we are very happy that this process is coming to an end.

Expansion product assortment

Additionally to the physical expansion, we spend a lot of time on setting up our ERP system. Our product assortment is growing since our office in Shanghai is busy with building relationships with new suppliers. Our colleagues in Shanghai speak the same language and have the same culture as most of our suppliers, which make it more easy to build a valuable relationship. We hope to optimize these relationships even further in the future.