Timber Standards
This page lists National and commercial timber standards from the UK and overseas which are concerned with timber packaging and related matters. The industry is not solely concerned with formal National or International Standards since many documents only exist in the commercial form, such as the widely used all-timber CP Chemical Pallet range by APME (Plastics Europe Association). Because of such extensive industrial and commercial use the CP range could be said to be of far greater importance than many EN or ISO standards. Although commercial specifications have not had the safeguard of the international participation that EN and ISO standards insist upon, the commercial bodies responsible for them on the other hand may argue that they enlist the services of specialists on drafting committees. They also make the point that in any case, with commercial standards, no company or country is obliged to use them.
Commercial specifications apart, since the move of standards bodies towards product performance rather than product specifications, then with rare exceptions less standards are now produced with 'wood pallets' in their title. Standards bodies now produce documents entitled 'pallets'. Many newer standards cover all materials, for example ISO 8611 now covers the testing of plastic, paper and steel pallets as well as timber. There are a few exceptions to this where dedicated single material standards remain, such as EN 351-1: Durability of wood and wood-based products.
Although wood is a unique and infinite raw material, it sometimes has an undeservedly poor environmental profile. For emotional and recreational reasons, felling trees has not always been regarded positively. In addition to this, ecological aspects such as deforestation, play an important role in the poor image of wood. Although deforestation is a serious issue it is a regional problem and cannot be applied directly to the timber industry in general. The wood used in the packaging and pallet industry almost entirely originates from managed forests where more trees are planted than are cut down, as with any farmed crop. For more detail on this subject enter 'sustain' into QUICK SEARCH.
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22b Customers requiring pallets made to obsolete BS 2629 (PDF 63kb)30a List of BS EN and ISO standards 2023 (PDF 106kb)30d Index of German (DIN) packaging standards and related documents. (PDF 29kb)41i Index of Wood Packaging Case Design - Standards and Related. (PDF 58kb)59a Index of European nailing standards. (PDF 16kb)86e Sustainable and recovered timber sources for pallets and packaging. (PDF 14kb)99b Purchasing BS, EN and ISO standards online or paper from BSI. (PDF 64kb)