Metal Roll Cages – How Can PPS Equipment Management Ltd Add Value?

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Offering a range of other services gives our customers a degree of confidence...

Measham, Derbyshire (PRWEB) November 26, 2009

There is no shortage of suppliers of standard roll cages today, but PPS Equipment Management Ltd can now offer users of these products some added services, distinguishing it from competitive suppliers.

From its base at Measham in the Midlands, PPS Equipment Management Ltd has built a solid reputation as a specialist in the field of returnable transit equipment (RTE) that includes plastic pallets, food crates and roll cages. With a focus on the food industry the company provides a service which they term a “full service option” – in brief this works in the following manner.

The PPS customer has a requirement for a certain quantity of RTE – in most cases this comprises plastic food crates and plastic pallets. He enters his requirements on the proprietary PPS online asset tracking system known as Enable. PPS delivers the agreed quantity to the client who in turn packs his products into the crates which are then loaded onto the plastic pallets.

The pallets/crates are then despatched to third parties, and again the despatch information is entered onto the Enable system. This allows PPS to track its equipment and of course arrange collection of used/dirty crates and pallets from around the country.

All dirty equipment is returned to the main PPS site in the Midlands where the company has established a state-of-the-art industrial wash plant. Two large wash lines one each for washing crates and pallets respectively not only handle all the proprietary PPS equipment, but the company deliberately purchased wash lines with greater capacity than they themselves needed and they sell excess capacity to third parties. Such third party customers may require washing on ad hoc basis, during seasonal peaks, on a one-off basis, or on longer term contract basis.

This latter service – i.e. contracted wash services, has become very popular and the company has been approached by a number of large blue-chip clients who require occasional or ongoing wash services. So, PPS decided to up the stakes a little and upgraded their facility and operating procedures – this resulted in PPS working towards, and eventually achieving ISO 22000:2005 accreditation. This briefly, relates to services for food safety and health and is one of the highest standards within this industry sector.

As well as plastic equipment such as pallets, crates and trays over the past couple of years PPS has extended its area of interest in this sector to metal roll cages. It may be argued that metal roll cages are far removed from plastic pallets and crates used to transport foodstuffs. However the principal of the PPS “full service option” – i.e. equipment rotation in an integrated loop system, can equally successfully be applied to any form of returnable transit equipment.

Part of the PPS operation, known as PPS Direct has, for the past couple of years been selling RTE – both new and second hand. A large percentage of these sales have been used roll cages, a very popular and ubiquitous item used across a broad swathe of industries and applications. While PPS is accustomed to operating within the food sector, recent sales have been to the automotive, retail, printing and waste management sectors.

PPS now offers an equipment management service for roll cages whereby it rents them out, tracks them and on return, instead of washing them each roll cage is inspected for damage. And there are often damaged units returned as they are seldom treated gently or with respect at the customer or end-user!

Addressing the issue of damaged roll cages PPS has set up an operation to repair roll cages at a secondary site, located close to the Midlands base. And once again PPS took a long-term view on this operation and not only repair their own equipment but offer to repair third parties roll cages. A further incentive is that they will also affect these repairs at a customer’s site should that be more convenient.

So, in effect PPS offer the user of roll cages a complete service which includes the rental of the unit, online tracking if required, repair and routine maintenance.

Director of PPS Iain McArthur said “Our core business over the years has been the management of returnable transit equipment, which has mainly been plastic pallets and plastic food crates. Then a few years ago we got into direct sales of equipment, almost as an afterthought as a number of clients asked us if they could purchase rather than rent. At first we resisted direct sales, but eventually decided to devote some resources to this. We did however feel we wanted to include some add-on services such as repairs and maintenance, services we knew competitors could not or would not offer. For example we colour-code our rental roll cages in our corporate colour which allows customers to instantly distinguish the cages we rent to them. And offering a range of other services gives our customers a degree of confidence that extra services are available even if they are not always utilised.

“Furthermore we are shortly to introduce a new, but similar service for the rental, management washing and critically the repair of plastic pallet boxes – again either on a customer’s site or we will transport to our site for repairs and refurbishments.”

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