Norbert Dentressangle to manage second Chep Service Centre
8 March 2010
Norbert Dentressangle has been awarded a new contract to manage a second Chep service centre at Aveley, near Thurrock in Essex.
Chep is the global leader in pallet and container pooling services serving many of the world’s largest companies.
The 7.5 acre Aveley site serves Chep customers, both in the South East of England and in mainland Europe.
Under the new contract, Norbert Dentressangle will be responsible for the inspection, repair, painting and despatch of around six million pallets per annum.
The new contract builds on Norbert Dentressangle’s existing relationship with Chep which began in 2005 when Norbert Dentressangle was appointed to manage a
Chep service centre in Dunstable. In 2009, Norbert Dentressangle invested more than £4 million in the development of a new, purpose-built, environmentally friendly
Chep service centre at Hoddesdon, where more than 90% of the waste generated by the operation is recycled.
Woodchip created from irrepairable pallets fuels a biomass boiler, which provides heating for the site and for drying pallets. Surplus woodchip is used to help fuel a
biomass power station in Slough.. A paint recycling facility also reuses overspray and generates savings in terms of paint used, waste removal and processing.
Like at Hoddeson, Norbert Dentressangle will be investing in technology and equipment to deliver environmental and operational benefits at Aveley.
Norbert Dentressangle will assume responsibility for managing the Aveley site from April 2011
New facility augments Chep Innovation Centre
Chep, an industry leader in pallet and container pooling solutions, today opened the doors to its new material-handling simulator. The simulator is the world’s first testing facility for pallets and customer unit-loads that can measure handling impacts throughout the entire distribution life cycle. The lab features testing machinery that simulates distribution and supply chain conditions to measure pallet damage and performance. Chep developed the 63,000 square foot facility to reduce the assessment period and cost for evaluating new shipping platform designs.
Primary benefits of the simulator for Chep include: a reduction in the need for lengthy material-handling field trials; dramatically lower costs from a 90% reduction in the number of shipping platforms needed for each test; and enhanced analysis from state-of-the-art measuring equipment. CHEP executives expect the lab will enable better decision-making for Chep and ultimately Chep customers by allowing quick comparisons of pallet durability and performance improvements against a control group representing current pallet platforms.
Chep’s Vice President of Quality and Customer Value, Skip Miller, said: “The material-handling simulator is a natural progression of Chep’s efforts to meet the growing product movement and storage needs of our customers while making the entire supply chain more efficient and productive. We look forward to significant advances in the area of shipping platform design and functionality from the facility.”
The simulator will employ about 20 support professionals and is located minutes from the headquarters of Chep Americas and the Chep Innovation Centre in Orlando, FL. It expands the range of testing available at the Innovation Centre, which remains open and dedicated to testing product and ingredient unit-loads and other packaging for customers.
Equipment at the material-handling simulator includes:
- a robotic vision system that generates high-resolution images to assess pallet damage, durability and life-cycle;
- five impact sleds that simulate forklift-truck contact from one to eight miles per hour; and
- a storage and retrieval system station that simulates all typical racking configurations.
The simulator feeds information from these devices into a system that records all
measurements into a database. The facility also includes forklift and pallet jack
stations to test manually the impact of racking, stacking, bulldozing and pinwheeling
pallets.
Chep renews with Norbert Dentressangle
Chep, the global leader in pallet and container pooling services has once again renewed its contract with Norbert Dentressangle.
Norbert Dentressangle’s relationship with Chep - the global leader in pallet and
container pooling services - began in 2005, when it was appointed to manage the company’s
service centre in Dunstable.
In 2009, Norbert Dentressangle invested c.£4 million
in the opening of a new service centre to replace the Dunstable facility.
The centre,
in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, consists of a 2,200 sq metre plant building and a six-acre
yard, which can hold 173,000 pallets. It is one of Chep’s largest service centres
in Europe, in terms of throughput, and employs a workforce of over 150 people.
The
plant contains 24 repair benches on two production lines and handles up to 170,000
pallets per week. Some seven million pallets every year are inspected, repaired and
painted as required, and then despatched to retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers
and growers across the south east of England.
Almost all of the waste generated by
the operation is recycled through innovative and environmental best practice and
investment.
As the partnership continues into the second year at the new centre,
Norbert Dentressangle will invest an additional £300k in automated pallet stenciling
equipment.
