Beecraft supplies plastic pallets across Leicester and Leicestershire from its Coventry depot, a straight run up the M69. The range covers rackable heavy-duty, hygienic food-grade, ESD and export pallets, plus Euro containers and stackable crates. Stock lines typically reach Leicester sites the next working day.
South Leicestershire holds one of the densest concentrations of large-format distribution space in Europe. Magna Park at Lutterworth sits on the M1 at Junction 20; Grove Park and Meridian Business Park cluster around Junction 21; East Midlands Gateway at Castle Donington adds a rail-connected terminal to the north. The buildings are enormous and the stock does not sit still.
That matters because pallets in these operations are not failing under load. They are failing from repetition — forklift entry, conveyor transfer, shuttle put-away, pick face, despatch, and round again. Timber loses a bottom board long before it loses its rated capacity, and a pallet with a missing board is a jam, not a breakage.
Automated conveyors, transfer cars and shuttle racking work to fixed tolerances. ISO 6780 sets principal dimensions and tolerances for flat pallets precisely because handling equipment is built to them. Moulded plastic holds those dimensions cycle after cycle; kilned timber swells, cups and shrinks with humidity.
Roller conveyors need continuous runners in the direction of travel. Chain conveyors need contact along the chain lines. Drive-in racking supports the pallet on two outer rails only. The same footprint in three base configurations behaves completely differently — send us the conveyor spec, not just the size.
At corridor throughput a pallet can turn weekly. Divide the purchase price by the number of trips it will survive and the comparison with a cheap timber pallet you replace three times a year usually stops being close.
Leicester is a serious food manufacturing city — snack production around Beaumont Leys, bakery and chilled ready-meal work across Braunstone Frith and Thurmaston, and a large South Asian food sector supplying nationally. Those sites buy pallets against an audit, not a catalogue.
Most are certified to a GFSI-recognised scheme, usually the BRCGS Global Standard for Food Safety. That brings three questions to every piece of equipment that enters production, pallets included.
We will not tell you a pallet is approved for a regulated use. What we will do is tell you the polymer, the surface, the wash temperature it tolerates and whether it has cavities, and let your HACCP team make the call. Start with the hygienic pallet range and the polymers we mould.
In Leicestershire the question is rarely how heavy the load is. It is what the pallet has to pass through on the way. Pick the pallet from the equipment, then check the load rating.
| Handling system | What the pallet has to do | Typical choice | Where timber lets you down |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wide-aisle beam racking | Carry the load unsupported across the beams for months | Heavy-duty rackable, 1200×1000, reinforced base | Creep and sag under sustained load; check the racking figure, not the static one |
| Drive-in and drive-through racking | Sit on two outer rails with nothing supporting the middle | Rackable pallet with full-length perimeter runners | Centre boards give way; edge support is the failure point |
| Roller or chain conveyor into an ASRS | Present continuous, true runners in the direction of travel every time | Moulded pallet with the base configuration matched to the conveyor | Broken bottom boards and protruding nails cause the jams and reject cycles |
| Washdown food production | Go through a wash and come back dry and clean | Hygienic closed-deck with no cavities and open drainage | Absorbs water; cannot be validated as cleaned |
| Chilled and frozen storage | Stay serviceable and impact-tolerant at the coldest point in the process | Cold-rated pallet, plus freezer spacers where blast freezing is involved | Nails work loose through freeze-thaw cycling |
Leicester is about 25 miles from our Coventry depot, straight up the M69, so this is one of the shortest runs we make.
Deliveries into Magna Park, Grove Park and the larger Junction 21 units usually need a booking slot and a gate reference. Give us those with the order and the vehicle turns up in the right window rather than sitting on the estate road.
Coventry operates no charging clean air zone, so there is nothing to plan around at the depot end.
The Coventry depot covers Leicester alongside the rest of the East and West Midlands. If you run sites across the M1 and M6 corridors, we can consolidate onto one delivery.
That depends on the base design rather than the footprint. Roller conveyors need continuous runners in the direction of travel; chain conveyors need contact along the chain lines; automated stores also care about overall height and squareness. Send us the conveyor specification and the pallet-entry drawing from your system supplier and we will tell you which base configurations will run and which will not.
Closed-deck hygienic pallets are the right starting point, because they can be washed and dried and shed nothing into product. Whether a specific pallet suits your site depends on the contact you have, your cleaning regime and your own HACCP assessment — we will not claim a pallet is approved for a regulated use. Tell us the application and we will give you the polymer, the surface and the wash temperature it tolerates.
The 600×400 footprint is modular with both common pallet sizes. On an 800×1200 Euro pallet you get four per layer with no overhang. On a 1200×1000 you get five per layer: three laid with the 400 mm side along the 1200 mm edge, then two turned through 90° in the remaining strip. Layer count then depends on container height and your stacking limit.
About 25 miles, and it is the M69 the whole way, so there is no cross-country element to the run. That makes collection a realistic option from most Leicester and Hinckley addresses — call ahead so the order is picked and waiting, and tell us the vehicle so we can confirm loading.
Stock lines are typically available for next working day delivery to the UK mainland, dispatched from our Coventry (CV4 9AP) 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 Coventry (CV4 9AP) 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 handling system and the postcode, and we will specify the right pallet and price it.