United Pal­let Ser­vices has signed off on a license agree­ment that for­mally grants ILS Global GmbH (Inno­v­a­tive Logis­tic Solu­tions of Zag, Switzer­land) exclu­sive rights to sell, mar­ket, and man­u­fac­ture all of the prod­ucts from its new divi­sion, The point­GUARD Pal­let Pro­tec­tion Sys­tems in Europe.

This agree­ment will also cover Rus­sia and Israel.  “We are proud to announce that we have part­nered with a com­pany that has the tenac­ity, knowl­edge and ded­i­ca­tion to nav­i­gate the Euro­pean mar­ket,” said Wayne Ran­dall, pres­i­dent of United Pal­let Ser­vices. “I can say with­out any reser­va­tion that ILS is the right fit in the point­GUARD fam­ily. The Euro­pean mar­ket is com­plex and tightly reg­u­lated and they have what it takes to launch the point­GUARD into Europe.”

The point­GUARD Pal­let Pro­tec­tion Sys­tems has devel­oped and patented unique plas­tic inserts that attach to the entry points of a wood pal­let, pro­tect­ing it from fork­lift and strap­ping dam­age while also defend­ing the prod­uct trav­el­ing on the pal­let as well.

ILS is a logis­tics com­pany, whose par­ent com­pany, ISM Inter­ser­vice, has been in busi­ness for more than 20 years.  Its pri­mary busi­ness is man­u­fac­tur­ing food ingre­di­ents and addi­tives as well as man­ag­ing their logis­tics ser­vices with their prod­ucts. They also con­tract with other com­pa­nies to han­dle their logis­tic ser­vices. In addi­tion to Switzer­land, ILS and its par­ent com­pany have offices in Dus­sel­dorf, Ger­many; Moscow, Rus­sia; Shanghi, China and are in the process of open­ing an office in Holland.

Philipp Mintchin, Pres­i­dent and CEO of ILS Global GmbH said “when I first heard about the point­GUARD, I knew imme­di­ately that this is a win­ner. Being able to improve the pal­let, which is the heart of logis­tics, with­out amend­ing the pal­let itself, is the best inno­va­tion I have seen in a long time. I am very proud to belong to the point­GUARD fam­ily now and believe that this prod­uct will soon be seen every day on pal­lets in shops such as your local super­mar­kets.”  ILS has already begun the process of cre­at­ing a steel mold for the 1200mm x 800mm Euro pal­let due to inter­est from sev­eral large cor­po­ra­tions. “The point­GUARD com­bines and max­i­mizes the two major fac­tors which new prod­ucts in the Euro­pean logis­tics mar­ket need…efficiency and effec­tive­ness,” said Marc Pronilow, COO of ILS. He went on to so that “The point­GUARD attacks the obvi­ous prob­lem that any wooden pal­let in any appli­ca­tion faces: forklift damage.”

This isn’t the first inter­na­tional expan­sion for The point­GUARD. Its foot­print expanded out­side the US this sum­mer when UPSI licensed Mex­ico, Cen­tral Amer­ica, South Amer­ica and The Caribbean to Grupo Mitasa of San Jose, Costa Rica.  “Our fam­ily con­tin­ues to grow at a pace that I could never have pre­dicted,” Ran­dall said, “we are quickly becom­ing a global oper­a­tion that is ded­i­cated to ush­er­ing in a new era for the wood pallet.”

The point­GUARD Pal­let Pro­tec­tion Sys­tems will be orga­niz­ing a meet­ing next year enti­tled Collaborate:2014, which will bring together all license hold­ers and UPSI staff. This syn­er­getic con­fer­ence will be the very first time that all par­ties involved with The point­GUARD will have come together.  “The abil­ity to col­lab­o­rate with each other will be our focus in 2014,” said Callen Cochran, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ager for UPSI and The point­GUARD Pal­let Pro­tec­tion Sys­tems. “The pal­let dam­age sit­u­a­tion is obvi­ously not unique to any one part of the world. Every­one on our team needs to have the abil­ity to learn from each other. The knowl­edge base that we have at our dis­posal is some­thing we want to cap­i­tal­ize on.”