Save Time and Money Case Study
A Green and Growing Partnership with Central Garden + Pet
Central Garden & Pet is a market leader in the pet and garden industries. Headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, the company employs more than 7,000 employees across its North American offices, distribution centers, and manufacturing facilities. The company’s portfolio of brands and solutions help its customers take better care of their homes, pets, lawns, gardens, and communities.
Central Garden & Pets’ brands include a wide variety of products for both animal care and lawn and garden care, including fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, and supplements. But the company faced numerous challenges with traditional wood-block pallets, including issues with pallets getting jammed in automated palletizers and being rejected by retailers due to damage — which incurred heavy fees. Another headache was the inbound inspections needed to manually review and set aside non-compliant wood pallets, a significant expense of time and effort.
Central Garden & Pets has transitioned to iGPS Logistics as its single-sourced pooled pallet supplier. iGPS provides recyclable plastic pallets from its pallet pool — meaning that Central Garden & Pets has access to the pallets it needs, when it needs them, without the need to store or dispose of pallets. Because of their uniform plastic construction, iGPS pallets have no nails or protruding splinters that can create debris and jam equipment. And because iGPS pallets are lightweight, they reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fuel costs.
Since coming aboard as an iGPS client, Central Garden & Pet no longer needs to perform inbound pallet inspections, because the company is confident that each pallet is of consistent size, weight, and construction. Other benefits include a significant decrease in retailer fees due to non-compliant pallets, and considerable time saved in administrative work. Automated palletization is no longer an issue, and productivity has improved because workers are no longer clearing jammed equipment and cleaning up wood and debris.