Fresh King, a grower and shipper of tropical and exotic fruits and vegetables, plans to expand shipments on CHEP pallets in the near future. It continues to experience customer service improvements from the use of the CHEP pallet pooling system.
The grower now uses CHEP pallets to transport avocados, coconuts, miniature vegetables, limes, lychees, mangos, yellow tomatoes, carambola, sugar-snap peas, snow peas, and French green beans from its warehouse south of Miami FL to supermarkets, warehouse clubs, and other wholesale distributors in the Northeast, Texas, and the Pacific Coast.
Fresh King has been growing its use of the CHEP pallet pooling program for more than a decade. Before joining the CHEP pool, it used limited-use pallets and found them lacking from a performance standpoint.
The firm continues to see improvements in productivity both at its own distribution center and at those of its customers. “With CHEP, we get a dependable pallet that our customers prefer. There are rarely any rejections of our loads at the customer’s receiving docks—and that keeps our costs down,” said Angel Jaimes, warehouse manager at Fresh King.
Jaimes said sustainability had been elevated in importance at Fresh King during the past year. The CHEP program had positive synergies with other packaging projects such as the use of a new box made from 100% recycled paper that Fresh Kind was now using for most commodities. Based on third-party Life-Cycle Inventory Analysis findings, through its use of the CHEP pooling system as opposed to limited-use whitewood pallets, Fresh King is reducing solid waste generation associated with shipping platforms by 95%, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 58%, and saving enough energy to power two homes with electricity for a year.
Additional information is available at www.freshking.com and www.chep.com.
