After the second world war, Ivar Svensson stopped harvesting peat in the bogs close to his home in Skåne. Now coal was used to heat homes instead. So Ivar used his savings to start a small carpentry shop for making boxes together with his brother Tore.
Peace in Europe also brought oranges, bananas and vegetables which were packed in boxes from Tore and Ivar and then stored in the Helsingborg cold store. A fork-lift truck used by the American troops in Europe also landed up in the same cold store. But before the truck could be of any use, a load bearer of appropriate dimensions was needed so that it could be lifted by the truck’s forks. The order went to Ivar Svensson’s recently opened carpentry shop.
Common standard for Europe
In both Sweden and the rest of Europe there were cries for pallets as a solution to logistics. With goods loaded on a pallet there was no need to load and unload ships, trains and lorries by hand.
When the Swedish state railway company (SJ) and the truck manufacturer BT wanted a common standard for pallets for all Europe’s railways, they turned to Gyllsjö in order to obtain a prototype. The so-called EUR pallet was adopted at a congress in Paris.
“And this is still what we live on. One-third of our sales comes from manufacture of EUR pallets,” says Lennart Svensson who is managing director of the family company today.
From factory to customer – products, mostly food and pharmaceuticals, are delivered on pallets. For example, the size of sugar lumps for coffee was not dictated by chance. They fill a package which in turn is placed in cases which fit exactly on a pallet that can take exactly half tonne load.
“An EUR pallet can on average be handled 147 times and has a useful life of five years,” explains Lennart.
Gyllsjö Träindustri also manufactures other pallets. These include half pallets, non-returnable pallets and custom pallets. Raw material is needed for all of them. They use spruce and pine of lower grades in 2.5-metre lengths, a total of more than 110,000 cubic metres per year. The company collects most of it from the suppliers using its own vehicles. The exception is Sveaskog which delivers to the door.
“Gyllsjö is an attractive customer. They can use raw material that other customers do not want, such as trees that have been attacked by the bark beetle, or rot-damaged but nail-tolerant wood that would otherwise be used a firewood,” says Bengt Börjesson, head of marketing at Sveaskog in Götaland.
Lennart Svensson and Bengt Börjesson having a chat.