Thinking beforehand about afterwards – Cabka-IPS creates products in accordance with the cradle-to-cradle principle.

Cabka-IPS doesn’t see old plastic products as trash, but instead as an opportunity to create something new. This holds true for the company’s pallets, boxes, and products that are part of the Eco-Products brand for road and traffic safety, as well as garden design and landscaping. The company manufactures the majority of these from recycled plastics.

Cabka-IPS gets the raw materials for its products from plastic used in private households and industry. For example, many of the Eco- Products are made from plastic packaging collected with the Grüner Punkt system. Discarded plastic packaging is processed at Cabka- IPS recycling facilities and forms the basis for the production of new products.

And even with the design of its products, Cabka-IPS is already taking steps to ensure that they can be put back into a technical circuit. A good example of this is the company’s partnership with the Dutch pallet pool Dranken Pallet Beheer (DPB). A total of 400,000 pallets of the model BPP i9 are successfully in use there. At the end of their life span, Cabka-IPS recycles these and uses them as raw material to produce new BPP i9 pallets. In this way, Cabka-IPS makes sure that reusable materials are kept in a closed ecological circuit and the environment is protected.

Cabka-IPS therefore supports the cradle-to-cradle production approach. Simply put, this approach is a way of using raw materials so that they can be continually be used anew in a permanent, and if possible, closed circulation. This approach stands in contrast to the cradle-to-grave model, in which products are manufactured with the idea that they will end up in a waste incineration plant at the end of their life span.

Cabka-IPS also designs other pallets, such as the Retail E5 and Heibronner H7, so that they can be reprocessed at the end of their life and utilized in other ways. This is not only sustainable but also innovative – and as such fully in line with the cradle-to-cradle approach.

Nest S5: the nestable plastic pallet by Cabka-IPS.

Cabka-IPS, the supplier of sustainable plastic pallets and boxes is adding the Nest S5 to its product range. The nestable pallet has an extra large contact surface: its 1200 by 1200 millimetres shape provides space for six units with standard modular dimensions (600 x 400 millimetres) per layer. This means that the Nest S5 can hold 20 percent more goods than an industrial pallet – or 50 percent more goods than a Euro pallet. This saves a great deal of space, which also makes it much cheaper to transport goods. This special dimension also offers sufficient surface area for transporting 200 litre kegs.

Because of its height of just 140 millimetres, very little space is needed for storing empty nestable pallets. It's also a genuine lightweight: The HDPE Nest S5 weighs in at a mere eleven kilogrammes and the PO plastic export pallet is only slightly heavier. Despite its low weight the pallet still has a dynamic load capacity, depending on its specific design, of up to 2,400 kilogrammes. The pallet comes with an open or closed deck. A five millimetre-high safety rim ensures that loads do not slip during transport. Alongside the nestable model with nine feet, the Nest S5 is also optionally available with three or six skids, which means it can also be block stacked.

The rugged BPP i9 pool pallet from Cabka-IPS.

The beverage industry places particularly high demands on pallets, especially when they are used as pool pallets. They must be extremely rugged, solidly built and long-lasting. At the same time they must be light and easy to handle.

To meet these requirements, Cabka-IPS has developed the BPP i9 beverage pool pallet. Made of recycled HDPE, it weighs only 23 kg, about half as much as a comparable wooden pallet. This makes handling easier and reduces CO2 emissions in transport. The BPP i9 is manufactured with gas-assist low pressure injection technology. In this process, hollow channels are generated within the pallet, making it both lighter and more rigid.

The BPP i9 has a high load capacity of 1,500 kg. Its rugged design ensures a long service life in pooling. Repairs are hardly ever necessary. Moreover, it never has contamination from splinters or woodchips, which is a problem with wooden pallets.

The BPP i9’s anti-slip strips and grommets ensure firm and safe handling of beverage containers. Extra wide openings between blocks make the pallets particularly easy to handle and protect them from damage. The BPP i9 was developed for the Dutch Dranken Pallet Beheer (DPB) pallet pool, which is already successfully putting 400,000 of them to use. They are manufactured according to the “Cradle to Cradle” principle in which the pallet is recycled at the end of its life cycle and the material reused.