How a Kalgoorlie assay-sample team protected airfreight payload with an ultralight nestable ISO pallet
A Kalgoorlie (Goldfields) assay-sample logistics team.
The operator
This is the sample-logistics function for a gold operation in the Western Australian Goldfields around Kalgoorlie, responsible for getting drill pulps and assay samples from site to interstate laboratories quickly and intact. Assay turnaround drives drilling decisions, so these samples often go by air — and airfreight is billed by chargeable weight, which makes every kilogram of pallet tare a direct, recurring cost. They came to us looking for the lightest compliant pallet they could put under a sample dispatch.
The problem with the old handling
Samples were being palletised on standard timber boards for air dispatch, and timber is heavy. On an airfreight lane, a heavy pallet eats chargeable payload that could have carried more sample, so the operation was effectively paying to fly pallet weight interstate on every run. Timber pallets also do not nest, so the empties that cycled back to site after each dispatch took full pallet volume on the return — wasted cube on a logistics budget that is already tight at a remote site.
Why this product
They moved to the Light Weight Nestable ISO Plastic Pallet (BPB-107): a 1,200 x 1,000 mm ISO pallet, 130 mm tall, moulded from HDPE, weighing just 4.9 kg, rated to 1,500 kg static and 750 kg dynamic, on a 9-foot base, and nestable for storage. The spec is built for airfreight. At 4.9 kg the tare barely registers against the chargeable weight of a load, so far more of the billable payload is sample rather than pallet. The 1,500 kg static and 750 kg dynamic ratings are ample for boxed pulps and sample bags. Being plastic, it also sidesteps the ISPM-15 timber-treatment requirement on any export leg. And because it nests, the empties returning to site after each dispatch stack down into a fraction of their footprint. The pallet is a high-volume air-freight item, and the 650-unit MOQ reflects a fleet bought for a steady sample-dispatch operation.
The rollout
They put the ultralight pallets under their interstate sample dispatches. The weight saving was immediate and measurable on the airfreight docket, and the pallets carried the boxed samples without issue. After each run, the empties nested down for the return to site, reclaiming the cube that timber had wasted on the backhaul. With no timber in the chain, the occasional export movement no longer triggered any treatment or certification fuss.
The estimated result
We frame these as estimates, because airfreight rates and load patterns vary. The headline lever is tare: replacing a heavy timber board with a 4.9 kg plastic deck frees an estimated 4-5% more chargeable airfreight payload per pallet position, which on a frequent sample lane is a direct and recurring saving. On the return, nesting the empties cuts the cube of pallets cycling back to site, easing the backhaul cost on a tight remote budget. And the plastic build removes ISPM-15 treatment from any export leg entirely. For an assay-driven operation where both speed and payload matter, we estimate the ultralight nestable pallet earns out quickly across repeated dispatches.