Plastic pallets for meat and Poultry

The loads on a packing floor

Trim and bulk cuts move in combo bins, the large plastic or corrugated totes set on a pallet base and filled from the cut floor. They are some of the heaviest food loads on any pallet, and the weight sits in a tight square in the middle of the deck.

Boxed meat leaves in waxed corrugated cases, stacked in a column pattern and wrapped. Poultry adds wet loads: iced or chilled birds in cases and totes that drip on the way to the dock. Case-ready plants ship trays of retail packs to grocery DCs.

Offal, hides and rendering material move through the plant too, often on separate, color-coded pallets kept away from edible product.

Sanitation night and the kill floor

A meat plant's sanitation crew works the floor every night with hot water at high pressure, foamed chlorinated alkaline cleaners and sanitizers. Wood can't be cleaned to that standard and comes back wet; it is rarely allowed past the dock in an inspected plant.

A hygienic plastic pallet for these rooms has a closed or solid deck with rounded corners, no hollow cavities that trap water, and drainage that lets it dry overnight. Open-cell legs and deep ribs hold fat and blood, so read the drawing for where water collects before you approve a model.

Pallets that cross from raw to cooked areas are a cross-contamination point. Plants keep them apart by color and wash or swap pallets at the boundary.

Color also helps with foreign material. Blue is a common choice in edible areas because a chipped corner shows up against red meat and pale poultry, where a gray or black fragment could pass unseen. Retire pallets with broken edges before chips start.

Further-processing lines (sausage, deli, cooked and smoked items) add heat and steam near ovens and cook tanks. Product goes through smokehouses on steel racks or trucks, not pallets, but staging pallets nearby see warm, humid air, which plastic tolerates and wood does not.

Coolers and blast freezers

Carcass coolers and cut rooms run just above freezing; blast freezers and storage freezers run well below zero Fahrenheit. HDPE holds its impact strength at those temperatures. PP copolymer is the other usable resin; plain PP homopolymer cracks when a fork hits it frozen.

Blast freezing goes faster when cold air reaches the bottom cases. An open or vented deck helps; a solid top slows the bottom layer. If a pallet goes into freezer racking, ask the maker for a racked rating at freezer temperature, since most sheets are written for room temperature.

Seafood processors share most of these conditions, plus salt water and slush ice.

Inspection and transport rules

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service inspects slaughter and processing plants, and its sanitation requirements cover equipment in edible product areas. FDA's FSMA sanitary transportation rule requires adequately cleanable equipment for food under FDA's jurisdiction. Which rule governs a given lane depends on the product and the facility, so ask your food safety lead; either way, the pallet has to wash clean.

21 CFR 177.1520 governs the olefin resins used in food-contact articles. Ask the maker for its resin letter for the exact model; there is no FDA approval for the finished pallet itself.

Footprints and types for meat and poultry

48x40 is the shipping size for boxed product to retail and food service. Combo bins are built around a square or near-square base, so match the pallet to the bin you run rather than assuming 48x40.

• Heavy duty plastic pallets →
• Cold storage plastic pallets →

Quoting a plant fleet

Tell us the footprint or bin size, the deck, the heaviest gross weight, whether it racks in the freezer, the colors per zone, the quantity and the delivery ZIP. We reply by email with models and a delivered price. Fleets that are cracked after years of freezer work still have value as regrind, and we buy them back.