This year marks a decade since Goplasticpallets.com – The Responsible Plastic Pallet Company signed an exclusivity agreement with Q-Pall BV – the plastic pallet producer, to become the sole UK distributor of its entire range of plastic pallets. Now 10 years on, Managing Director of Goplasticpallets.com, Jim Hardisty explains what makes this a special plastic pallet partnership, shares those products that have had the biggest impact on the UK market, and predicts what the future holds.
“As I look back on the last 10 years working with Q-Pall, it gives me a great sense of fulfilment to see how far we’ve both come. Q-Pall’s mission is to always be on the move, because ‘movement is progress’ and during the time we’ve been working with Q-Pall, they’ve never stopped moving. They have a strong focus on innovation and are always researching new products to serve both existing and emerging markets.
Although a fairly small team at Q-Pall, they’re extremely efficient and responsive. We pride ourselves on being the UK’s plastic pallet experts, but we don’t always hold the answers to our customers sometimes very technical questions. In this instance, we can rely on Q-Pall to give us instant answers – they’re always quick to pick up the phone and reply to our emails.
Like our long-standing management team at Goplasticpallets.com, the MDs at Q-Pall – Arno and Bjorn – have been collectively serving the company for over 20 years, and prior to that have been working in the pallet and plastics industries. They’ve built a solid, committed team at Q-Pall – most of whom we’ve met in person on visits to the company’s head office in Veghel, in the Netherlands.
As we pride ourselves on being able to fulfil orders direct from stock, we need our manufacturing partners to be able to respond fast to large quantities. With access to four manufacturing sites – in the Netherlands, Denmark and two in Germany – Q-Pall is well equipped to meet our needs and has never let us down.
Product-wise we now offer all the 90+ plastic pallets available from Q-Pall’s range. The central core of our business with them is their range of open flow-through heavy and medium duty pallets, which is second to none. We also offer the full range of their nestable plastic pallets, which are popular with our retail customers for point-of-sale and display, due to their light weight and easy handling.
On a personal level, we’ve developed a great relationship with the Q-Pall team – Arno and Bjorn in particular. When we speak, it’s not all business; we’ll exchange news about our families and they very kindly text us on our birthdays – we appreciate touches like this. Doing business is much easier when you’re sharing it with genuinely nice people.
So, what does the future hold for our plastic pallet partnership?
Looking ahead, we see a long and fruitful partnership. Q-Pall will continue to develop its range to meet the changing demands of the logistics and manufacturing industries and we’ll continue to expand our stock to fulfil the evolving needs of our customers.
These first 10 years working together have been both enjoyable and rewarding and we look forward to sharing the next 10!”
Jim Hardisty – Managing Director van Goplasticpallets.com