Millwood, Inc.’s sawmill and pallet assembly plant in Waverly, OH has purchased a new heat treat system. The purchase of this new system will be used to heat treat pallets for customers who will be using them for export purposes.
“For us to become completely sustainable is just amazing, and it wouldn’t have happened without the great team I have here at the plant and at the corporate level,” said Plant Manager Richard Clark. “We can now offer full-sustainability services.”
Since the inception of the Waverly location, any pallet heat treatment services was allocated to other local pallet yards. That meant Millwood was paying another vendor to heat treat their pallets. It also meant Millwood was paying drivers to load pallets on a truck in addition to transporting the pallets to and from the vendor.
“Doing business this way produced zero profit. It was actually costing the company money,” Clark said.
Now the Waverly team will be able to source lumber, manufacture pallets and heat treat the pallets, if necessary, all in one location. Once those pallet orders are completed, they are loaded on a truck and shipped to their destination.
In 2019, Millwood spent over $60,000 in labor and shipping to have pallets heat treated at the Waverly location. Clark said the new heat treat system will create revenues they have never seen before. Those revenues will have paid for the heat treater in about two years, Clark added.
The new system, purchased from Kiln Direct, can heat treat a full truck load of grocery manufacturers association (GMA) pallets at a time.
Clark said the heat treater will be operational later next week once a concrete pad was installed, which will be the base for it.
