Tipci Group are both honoured and delighted to be a finalist at this year’s The Portsmouth News Innovation Awards! 

We have been shortlisted for the category of Environmental Innovation Award, sponsored by BAE Systems.

Innovation By TIPCI

If you’ve been following our story, you might know that we’ve innovated a process, which has involved designing and building our own in-house machine that crushes and reprocesses waste wood into heat-treated pallet blocks. This is a significant step forward in our mission to become the first waste zero pallet company in the UK.

Millions of tonnes of waste wood is dumped into landfill every year and recently, because of the amount of wood heading there, landfills have had to refuse this wood. It is either burnt, which causes air pollution and increased carbon emissions from incomplete combustion or it is dumped via other methods.

Making A Difference In The Packaging Industry

Being a pallet company we understood the amount of waste that was created from off cuts and broken pallets and this is something that we feel needs to change.

This year we have decided to make a change to what is happening to waste wood and where it is going. For a long time we have refurbished used pallets and made them reusable for businesses, but we always struggled to find the blocks for the pallets; often we would travel overseas to purchase these products from companies who are cutting down trees to produce the new blocks. This year, in 2021, we are extremely proud to present our crushing and block making machine, which recycles waste wood into sawdust. The wood is treated to ensure all bugs are removed and then we produce pallet blocks from this. It makes us the first company in the UK to do such a thing. We are able to sell pallets and rather than them going to landfill or being burnt when they are unusable, we take the wood in to reprocess and create pallet blocks out of this. Everything that we have done with this project ensures we are having the greatest impact on the environment as we possibly can. We have managed to create a full cycle of product – recycle – product – recycle. This process can happen unlimited times and is something that we are proud of and that we are striving to continue and improve upon.

The machine is made of a crusher which takes the wood as a large product and crushers into smaller pieces, we then grind this into sawdust. To ensure the wood is safe to use for customers and they can store their goods on there without contamination we have a unique way of air drying the particles that only we do in this country. From here we mix the sawdust with adhesive and heat press this until the pallet blocks are produced. Once the pallet blocks are cut and nailed onto the pallets we are then able to send it back out to our customers, when the life of these pallets are at an end, we take this back in through the machine and restart the process. The pallets and blocks that we produce are stronger than new wood in many cases which is another great advantage that we are having as the pallets are lasting longer than they were before.

The awards take place on the evening of the 4th November, 2021. Please wish us luck at this evening’s awards! We are crossing all our fingers!!