The mark is deliberately dull: a stylised wheat sheaf, a two-letter country code, a facility registration number and a treatment code. If all four are present, legible and on at least two opposite sides of the pallet, your wood packaging is compliant.
The four elements
- The IPPC symbol — the wheat sheaf. Without it, nothing else counts.
- Country code — two letters, ISO 3166. 'US' for material treated here.
- Facility code — the registration number of the treatment provider.
- Treatment code — 'HT' for heat treatment, 'DH' for dielectric heating, 'MB' for methyl bromide (now refused by most destinations).
What HT actually certifies
That the wood reached 56 °C at its core and held it for at least thirty continuous minutes. It says nothing about moisture content, nothing about strength and nothing about the date of manufacture — which is precisely why a recycled pallet can be perfectly compliant.
The repair trap
This is where consignments get held. A treated pallet repaired with an untreated board is no longer compliant, even though the mark is still there and still legible. The whole unit must be re-treated and re-marked.
Equally, a pallet carrying bark on any component fails regardless of treatment. Australia and New Zealand inspect for this specifically and are unforgiving about it.
A pre-shipment checklist
- Marks on two opposite sides, legible, not painted over.
- No bark on any component, including blocks.
- No repairs since treatment, or evidence of re-treatment.
- Treatment code acceptable in the destination country.
- Dunnage and bracing treated too — it is in scope and routinely forgotten.
Constants used in this piece
- New hardwood pallet, embodied
- 12.6 kg CO₂e
- Recycled deck, processed
- 1.0 kg CO₂e
- Net credit per reuse cycle
- 11.6 kg CO₂e
- Heat treatment, per deck
- 0.9 kg CO₂e
- Average pallet mass
- 15 kg / 33 lb
- Road freight
- 0.11 kg CO₂e / ton-mile
Our standing commitments
- Reuse first, repair second, recycle third, landfill never.
- A pallet is only downgraded for a defect a grader can name out loud.
- The recycled alternative appears on every quote, even when you ask for new.
- Every diversion figure traces back to a weighbridge ticket.
Written at the Meeks Blvd yard in St. Louis. If a figure here looks wrong to you, tell us — our model constants are published precisely so they can be argued with.