Wooden pallets neatly stacked in the warehouse of the industrial park, with smart chips inside the white plastic sheet
In midsummer, Putou Port, Xiuyu Port District, Wanfang Storage Yard, giant trees and high fortifications. Separated by a wall, in the first phase of Fujian Guolin Timber Industrial Park covering an area of 487 mu, forklifts are busy, and stacks of wooden pallets are neatly loaded and sent to various parts of the country.
This kind of pallet is unfamiliar to many people, but it can be seen everywhere in docks, supermarkets, warehouses and other places. It is widely used in the assembly, stacking and handling of goods, and is an indispensable tool for modern logistics operations. Pallets are generally divided into three categories: metal, plastic and wood. Among them, wooden pallets are the most widely used because of their cheap price, strong performance, carbon sequestration and environmental protection. Taking advantage of the port, Fujian Guolin Timber Industrial Park settled in Putou Port to expand the wooden pallet industry.
To make wooden pallets, you need to saw the logs first, process them first, then dry them, cut them, splice them, etc. In the drying area of the industrial park, the reporter saw that 40 drying kilns with a size of 100 cubic meters were arranged in two rows. When the kiln door was opened, the neatly stacked plates exuded the fragrance of logs. In the boiler area, a 15-ton boiler is continuously supplying heat for the drying kiln.
“Our boilers do not use fossil energy as fuel, but completely use biomass particles made from leftover materials from wood processing. After the waste gas passes through dry electric dust removal and water mill dust removal, it is discharged up to the standard, and the adsorbed and solidified slag is handed over to a third-party qualified enterprise. It can be processed and reused.” Zhou Zhimin of Fuzhou Guolin Forest Products Co., Ltd. introduced that the boiler has outstanding energy-saving effect, and plans to add another one.
Next to the drying kiln is the fully automatic production plant for wooden pallets. I saw the workers put the cut boards into the conveyor belt, and within two minutes, the cloth nails on the pier head, bridge board, panel and bottom board were completed.
Wooden pallet automatic production line
“Different from traditional wooden pallets, our pallets help realize the intelligent management of the whole process of materials by implanting chips.” Fan Shoulong, the person in charge of pallet production in the park, brought reporters to the warehouse, where tens of thousands of pallets are like a building. Neatly stacked, each pallet is painted green, and a white plastic sheet is fixed with screws on the side of the pallet, with the logo and barcode of Zhonglin Group printed on it. This is the smart chip of Zhonglin Group’s digital wooden pallets. The chip adopts radio frequency identification technology, as long as the pallet enters and exits the warehouse, it can realize non-contact two-way data communication, which greatly improves the efficiency of warehouse management, improves the speed of handling and loading, and reduces the cost of logistics and transportation.
The wood is dried from the kiln and shipped to various places
As the only central enterprise in the forestry industry and the main force in the construction of the national ecological industry, Zhonglin Group focuses on the goal of “realizing the recycling and sharing of wooden pallets and promoting the development of green and low-carbon industries”, with Fuzhou Guolin Forest Products Co., Ltd. Fujian Guolin Timber Industrial Park Co., Ltd. is the main body of production, and Zhonglin Vehicle (Fujian) Operation Management Co., Ltd. is the main body of operation to build a wooden pallet industry base and develop “carbon sequestration economy on wooden pallets”. At this stage, the monthly production capacity of wooden pallets is up to 300,000 pieces, and the planned monthly production capacity in the future is 2 million pieces, with an annual output value of 3 billion yuan.
Aerial photography of Fujian Guolin Timber Industrial Park
“Based on the imported timber of Putou Port, the new model of integrated development of Hong Kong and industry that we have jointly explored with Putou Port is becoming the key for us to build a ‘carbon neutral’ wood industry park.” Zhou Zhimin told Reporter, every 1 cubic meter of wood can produce 18 pieces of wooden pallets. According to the calculation of the annual output of 10 million pallets, about 600,000 cubic meters of log materials are used every year, and about 530,000 tons of carbon can be sequestered every year.
According to information from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, wood and wood products are efficient and cheap carbon sequestration bodies. The wood industry not only has low processing energy consumption, but also the leftovers and waste products generated in the production process can be used as biomass fuels, which reduces the use of fossil energy while improving the utilization rate of wood. Wooden pallets use natural wood as a raw material and will always exist as a carbon store as long as they are in use. The production and use of wooden pallets can achieve carbon sequestration and offset part of the greenhouse gas emissions, which is one of the effective ways to deal with climate change.
