LEAP India, a leading supply chain management solutions firm for the auto, e-commerce and FMCG sectors, expects demand for pallets on lease to touch 4 million next year from 3 million deployed currently.
After the introduction of GST, the demand for pallets from large warehouses has increased to drive vertical storage and efficient transportation, said the company.
Increasing demand from both domestic and international warehousing companies is driving demand for efficient and international practices of storing and moving goods. Internationally, goods are stored and moved with the help of forklifts, which drives the demand for storing and transporting goods on pallets.
India has moved well on this front in the last five years, and there is lot more to do in the next decade, said LEAP India.
Palletising products can increase operational efficiency, on-time delivery, resulting in greater visibility of FMCG, beverage products on the shelves of retail outlets.
A truck-load of goods requires 14 workers and 3 hours to load and unload. However, palletising can not only reduce requirement of manpower, but also reduce the loading time to just 30 minutes from 3 hours, which saves on additional costs, it said.
LEAP has a network of 22 warehouses, 25 contract manufacturing centres and a team of around 450 employees serving over 550 unique customers at over 7,000 touch-points in India. It recently emerged the leader, with a market share of 70 per cent. The company currently has 55,000 foldable large containers (FLCs) deployed across India.
Sunu Mathew, Managing Director, LEAP India said achieving the milestone to deploy three million pallets and becoming the market leader by serving every leading brand was quite encouraging.
"We see enough opportunity in both pallets and FLCs. We are all geared up to tap this huge opportunity as we are well positioned to expand our pallets base," he said.
LEAP India recently transitioned from dot net technology to SAP. This new development involves the implementation of an industry-leading Enterprise Resource Planning system to transform business operations, allowing the company to achieve operational excellence and improve productivity, he added.