Beecraft supplies plastic pallets across Essex and the Thames Gateway from its Wembley depot, with stock lines reaching Thurrock, Basildon and Chelmsford next working day. The range runs from heavy-duty export pallets for London Gateway and Tilbury container traffic to pallet boxes, crates and returnable packaging.
Two deep-water container ports sit inside twelve miles of each other on the north bank of the Thames. DP World London Gateway occupies the old Shell Haven refinery site at Stanford-le-Hope, its logistics park alongside; the Port of Tilbury sits upriver off the A1089, with Tilbury2 adding roll-on roll-off and construction materials in 2020. Both feed the A13.
A pallet serving a domestic customer is a handling asset. A pallet going into a box at Thurrock has to clear a border, sit on a ship for weeks and arrive intact. Different jobs, rarely the same pallet.
Since 2016 the shipper has had to declare a verified gross mass for every packed container before it is loaded. Pallet tare is inside that number. On dense freight you hit the weight limit long before you fill the box, and every kilo of pallet is a kilo of product you did not ship.
A standard 40 ft container gives you roughly 2.39 m of internal height, a high cube about 2.69 m. Double-stack inside it and you pay for the pallet deck twice. Low-profile export pallets exist precisely for this, and the gain is real on light, bulky cargo.
Timber carries moisture into the box and gives it up as the container heats and cools across latitudes; the condensation lands on your cargo. Polymer does not hold water.
Away from the river the mix changes. Basildon, Harlow and Chelmsford are engineering towns; the aggregate wharves at Purfleet and West Thurrock run heavy, abrasive, outdoor loads. Both get specified differently from a container load.
No, and for an exporter shipping regularly out of Tilbury or London Gateway that single fact is often worth more than the pallet itself.
ISPM 15 governs solid wood packaging moving between countries. Timber pallets, cases, crates and dunnage must be debarked and heat treated — a core temperature of 56°C held for at least 30 continuous minutes — then stamped. The standard exists because raw timber carries bark beetles and nematodes across borders. Processed non-solid materials fall outside it, so a plastic pallet needs no treatment, no mark and no certificate.
Two caveats. ISPM 15 is only one part of a destination’s import requirements, so confirm what the receiving country asks for on your commodity. And London Gateway, Tilbury and Ford Dagenham sit inside the Thames Freeport designation, where customs procedures in a designated customs site work differently — a conversation for your customs agent. Background: why plastic pallets and the polymers we mould.
A standard 40 ft box gives around 12.03 m of internal length on about 2.35 m of width; a 20 ft gives roughly 5.90 m. Those figures vary with the container build, so treat any pallet count as a plan to be checked against the real box.
The width is why footprint matters. Two 1200×1000 pallets laid with the metre side across take 2.00 m and leave 350 mm doing nothing; turn one through 90° and you are at 2.20 m. Euro 800×1200 fills that width better, and pinwheeling — alternating orientation down the box — often recovers a row. Most loaders reach the low twenties in a 40 ft with 1200×1000 and a few more on Euro footprints, but loaded height and load stability decide the final figure.
| Pallet choice | How it behaves in the box | Best suited to | Check before you commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1200×1000 UK standard | Two abreast leaves 150–350 mm slack depending on orientation; easy to strap | Dense export loads, and stock that also sits in your own racking | Run the floor plan before you commit volume |
| 800×1200 Euro footprint | Fills the width more efficiently; pinwheeling often recovers a row | European traffic, groupage and anything crossing the Channel | Pinwheeled loads must be stable enough to strap properly |
| Lightweight nestable, one-way | Lowest tare weight into the verified gross mass; nests down before use | Consignments that will never come back to you | Not rated for racking — flag it if the consignee racks |
| Heavy-duty rackable, returns to you | More tare weight, but survives repeated forklift and quay handling | Closed-loop and short-sea trades where the pallet comes home | Confirm the racking load, always lower than the static figure |
| 1140×1140 square footprint | Squares up under drums and IBCs; loads in either orientation | Chemicals, resins and drummed liquids from Thames-side sites | Confirm the drum pattern before standardising |
Essex is served from our Wembley depot — North Circular to the A13, or the M25 round if you are up towards Harlow and Braintree.
One boundary worth knowing. The London ULEZ stops at the Greater London boundary, so Thurrock, Basildon, Chelmsford and Southend sit outside it — but Dagenham, Rainham and Romford are inside the zone, which catches out anyone calling those sites “Essex”.
The Wembley depot covers Essex alongside the rest of London and the Home Counties. If your sites straddle the river or the M25, we can consolidate onto one delivery.
No. The debarking, 56°C heat treatment and marking requirements apply to solid wood packaging. Processed non-solid materials sit outside the standard, so plastic pallets need no treatment and carry no mark. That removes a real rejection risk at the far end, since non-compliant timber packaging can be refused entry or destroyed. Confirm the destination’s wider import requirements too.
It depends on the footprint, the loaded height and whether the load can be pinwheeled, so we will not quote a single number. The working figures are about 12.03 m of internal length, 2.35 m of width and 2.39 m of height in a standard 40 ft — 2.69 m in a high cube. Send the product dimensions and the container type and we will work the floor plan through with you.
Yes. Both are straightforward runs from Wembley via the A13. Give us the site, any booking-in requirement and the vehicle restrictions, and say if you need tail-lift delivery.
Almost all of it is outside. The zone covers the London boroughs and stops at the Greater London boundary, so Thurrock, Grays, Basildon, Chelmsford, Harlow and Southend are unaffected. Dagenham, Rainham, Romford and Hornchurch are inside London and inside the zone. The charge is £12.50 a day for non-compliant vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes.
Stock lines are typically available for next working day delivery to the UK mainland, dispatched from our Wembley (HA9 0YJ) depot. Custom sizes and bespoke colours usually run to 2–4 weeks depending on specification. Give us the postcode and the quantity and we will confirm a date rather than a range.
No. We supply single pallets and full loads alike, and there is no maximum either. For smaller quantities it is worth asking about used and refurbished stock, which carries the same handling characteristics at lower cost.
Yes, from our Wembley (HA9 0YJ) depot on most stock lines. Call ahead so the order is picked and waiting, and tell us your vehicle type so we can confirm access and loading.
Send us the load, the destination and the postcode, and we will specify the right pallet and price it.