One of the most important initiatives this year at Kamps is our lumber recycling center (LRC) project. Making use of lumber recycling centers will be an excellent way for Kamps to produce lumber from recycled pallets, and it will enable Kamps to bring new and existing customers much better pricing compared to all-new lumber pallets. It’s a win-win for our customers and us.
Currently the pallet industry, along with all industries that rely on wood, is experiencing the effects of a serious lumber shortage. Because of the law of supply and demand, when lumber becomes scarce, its price goes up.
It’s important for Kamps to be able to accommodate our customers and to insulate them as much as is possible from the price inflation at work here. Kamps Pallets purchases about 3,000 truckloads of new lumber a year. This averages out to approximately 12 truckloads a day for every working day of the year. The lumber shortage will affect our prices in the short and longer term; it has to.
Our customers naturally have questions. They want to know why prices on pallets are rising. They are asking if pallets will remain in available supply. They would like to know how long this wood shortage will remain a problem and if transitioning to a different kind of pallet would be wise. We are aware of all of these concerns, and we are working every day to make sure that we have enough pallets for our customers and that they are competitively priced.
This is why our lumber recycling center project is so important. Our goal is to study all of our plants’ pallet disassembly and sawing techniques, find the best practices, the ones with the greatest efficiency and best cost of production, and then implement these practices in all of our plants. We are committed to reclaiming as many pallets for the lumber as possible. Kamps calls this “harvesting the urban forest”, and it will allow us to manufacture quality pallets at a reduced price, as well as enabling us to pass on tremendous savings to our customers.
