Collars
One of the most useful pallet accessories is the folding steel-hinged pallet collar. A European Standard was first proposed in 1992 but due to pressure of work with other pallet standards (there were about 10 being produced) the work was not started until 1996. There was full support for this standard from the outset, which was to cover strength, safety, compatible dimensions and terminology of the steel and wood components. It was to cover all collars made of all materials whether softwood, plywood or plastic and apply to all the countries of Europe (as do all CEN standards.)
Folding Pallet Collar
Sweden was the innovator in collar use and design and in 1996 submitted its National Standard SS 842021 to form the basis of the new European standard. At the outset PalletLink formed a technical committee to feed test results into CEN and this comprised European collar makers, hinge makers, plywood development interests, the UK Defence Service (MoD) and Chep in Europe.
A range of commercial collars were load tested in a South London UKAS accredited laboratory to determine the potential effect of such a standard on current Swedish and European designs. From the test results it was clear that the standard was too tough for the constructions widely used, almost all collars were failing the tests. It was found that many collars had progressively suffered weakening through reduced steel hinge thickness and reduced plywood thickness. The CEN Committee made these modifications -
a) The introduction of an EN Light Duty Collar with a 50% lower test load
b) Simplification of the Compression test making it safer for labs to undertake
Once these changes were made, the draft then had unanimous support in the formal European ballot and became a Standard in all European (EU) countries. It was published as EN 13545: 2002 Pallet superstructures - pallet collars - test methods & performance requirements.
Further tests since then by the UK technical committee showed a surprising number of commercial designs of collar still fail even the lower EN Light Duty Collar requirements, it would seem then that, by and large, that this is a European Standard neither manufactured to, nor demanded by buyers.
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20a An Introduction to Pallet Collars (PDF 27kb)20c Results of testing four and six hinge pallet collars (PDF 20kb)74b Using plywood, waferboard and chipboard in pallet collars (PDF 22kb)