We’re still winners!! Freightweek’s readership, alongside the air cargo community, have voted AEROTUF to have the Best Sustainable Cargo Technology for 2022. Why, I hear you ask? Well, in a word… ‘composites’. Generally speaking, a composite is a material made from two or more different materials that, when combined, are stronger than those individual materials by themselves.
Let’s next take a closer look at our innovative ULD pallet range, the AeroPALLET, to demonstrate where these composite materials can deliver tangible benefits to their adopters.
Our standard AeroPALLET is made from composite materials that make the regular unit 8 times stiffer than a regular ULD pallet. Here’s why that’s important… stiffness is essential because it allows the user to eradicate or greatly reduce the amount of shoring material that is needed to prevent the pallet from flexing under the weight of the load being placed on it, preventing damage to the goods being shipped, and in turn protecting the aircraft they are being shipped on.
What does this truly mean for our environmental impact? Well, our research has shown that the lumber, or timber, used in shoring materials, usually weighs around 40kg per pallet. Sourced from trees, this lumber goes through a lengthy preparation process; it needs to be planted, grown, cut down, milled to the correct shape, treated, packed, stored, transported and paid for, all before it is placed onto a ‘regular ULD’, shipped and disposed of at its destination.
Not only is reducing the use of shoring kinder to the environment and more sustainable, it also means not having to fuel the movement of the 40kg in this material. As if that wasn’t enough, the AeroPALLET can greatly enhance an operations’ efficiency which, in the highly constrained labour market that the operation side of the air cargo market is seeing today, can only benefit its adopters.
The great news doesn’t stop there… as we all know, loads on ULD pallets can vary greatly, therefore we incorporated ‘tunable composites’ into our AeroPALLET; materials which can be enhanced to suit requirement, to make it even stiffer and stronger, without affecting the TSO certification of the pallet.
If you would like to know more about how we could develop a business case of the use of AeroPALLET’s for your operation, please do get in contact and we can schedule a conversation to explore options together.
