Banana stems being used for transportation pallets
Banana stems are being converted into transportation pallets to deliver a cost effective and climate-friendly solution for the transportation of refrigerated products. The solution from Yellow Pallet helps cut-down the costs of pallets by 30% and reduce carbon emissions by up to 22%.
The project, assisted by Climate KIC, achieves its results by developing factories near the farmers’ base, helping lower the cost of sourcing the banana fibres. Yellow Pallet is unique in that it uses fibres as a wood-replacement application, and provides an optimised factory design with customised machinery and harvesting solutions. It also provides supplies and 24/7 services with an output guarantee to eliminate having to buy expensive wooden pallets.
Hein van Opstal, Yellow Pallet co-owner and manager, said: “Export organisations all consider the daily management and purchasing of the current one-way wooden transport pallets as a daily nightmare. They are expensive and often of low quality.”
Yellow Pallet intends to partner with a customer in the construction of the first factory, helping support the financing of the factory and continue research and development. Factory construction is expected to begin in the summer, by when it also expects to complete Stage 3 of the Climate-KIC Accelerator.
