Pallet suppliers consolidate

By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 9/1/2005

Two acquisitions in the pallet industry are changing the face of that business and the companies involved.

Millwood, Inc., a supplier of new and used pallets and pallet repair services, has acquired Liberty Industries, a sales organization specializing in pallet management and automated load unitization systems.

In addition, Rehrig Pacific Co., a specialist in industrial containers, has acquired Penn Pallet (814-834-1700) of St. Mary's, Penn.

Millwood's move creates a single company with sales in excess of $100 million, according to Lionel Trebilcock, Millwood's president. More importantly, the addition of Liberty's sales expertise will allow Millwood to expand beyond its base in the northeast and Midwest.

"Our primary focus and strength has been as a manufacturing and service company with an emphasis on operations," says Trebilcock, who points out that Millwood has been a long-time service provider to CHEP. "In order to grow our business, we have to get more people out there to tell the market what we at Millwood can do."

Rehrig's move also will impact the company's traditional business. "We recognized that we wanted to grow outside of our manufacturing background into servicing and logistics," says Matt Dannenfeldt, general manager at Rehrig. "The acquisition is part of an overall strategy to be a full service logistics provider."

Rehrig praised Penn's ability to manage several aspects of the logistics enterprise. "They really understand in particular supply chain flow, pallet flow and the operations of managing high volume pallet philosophy," he notes. "We found that they have done pallet management for a long time for a number of retailers and their philosophy of customer service was in line with where we wanted to be."