Luxembourg-based RM2 International entered the U.S. newspaper supply chain in the latter part of 2014 with a rentable fiberglass composite pallet used to distribute pre-printed inserts. By far its most prominent customer in the industry is Quad/Graphics, one of the United States' largest commercial printers, with dozens of facilities across the country that print flyers for major retailers, shipping them for insertion into daily and weekly newspapers. Quad/Graphics phased in the new pallets over the course of the last year or so, scaling back on its use of a plastic, nestable pallet by Perfect Pallets that has been in wide circulation in the market for more than 20 years.

"What's wrong with a little good-old-fashioned competition?" one might ask. "Aren't there enough wooden pallets still in use that there's room in the market for two vendors of reusable pallets? There are trees to be saved, after all. And Quad/Graphics can't be blamed for wanting to trim its operating costs with a substantially less expensive rental pallet."

But all of that is beside-the-point to the downstream recipients of the new pallets, who argue that the product itself is poorly designed for its end use, presenting hardships and hazards that packaging and warehouse managers had not previously encountered with reusable plastic or one-time-use wooden pallets.

Ms. Sawyer is quoted in the article as stating,"We store our pallets downstairs until we have someone come pick them up. We just don't have the room to store these because I won't allow them to be stacked," she said. "The Perfect Pallets we can stack 25 in a stack and put them right on the fork lift without having to secure them together, and they're not going to wiggle around. It's very safe." In contrast, she said, "I won't allow (RM2 pallets) to be stacked any higher than three or four."

For the complete article about RM2 Pallets click here.
In a phone interview Sawyer said her staff is now stacking up to 10 RM2 pallets due to the increased volume in the use of these pallets since she was interviewed by E&P.  She said the problem with the pallets stacked higher is that are not safely movable at that height.  She also mentioned that she refuses to shrink-wrap the pallets - that's an added unnecessary expense for supplies that the paper should not be responsible for.