CMTP, a leading Australian pallet manufacturer, acquired a majority interest in Aspect Packaging Group in September, 2008. The move created the largest pallet and packaging supplier in Australia.

            CMTP has humble beginnings but now has facilities strategically located throughout Australia and offers a wide range of products to diverse industries. The company not only supplies transport packaging, including pallets and wood containers and cardboard containers, but also lumber, flooring and moulding. It is a major supplier of pallets to Loscam, a leading pallet rental company in Australia and Southeast Asia, according to CMTP.

            The company’s mills and plants are equipped with machinery and equipment supplied by Australian manufacturers as well as some leading and well known pallet and sawmill equipment manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe, such as Baker Products, Viking Engineering, Holtec, Storti, GAP, and Rayco.

            CMTP remains a family-owned and operated business. The head of the family and the business is Chris Meade, who has been joined in the company by two of his four sons, Travis and Xavier.

            Chris, 55, worked on dairy farms as a young man. He started a construction business in 1975, intending to save money in order to buy a farm.

            His interest in the pallet industry was spurred by the use of pallets to deliver bricks and other materials to building sites. A year later, Chris began building produce bins for potato farmers. He built them in his back yard and loaded them by hand onto farmers’ trucks. That was his entrance into the pallet and container industry.

            He later organized the pallet and container business as Colac Pallet Co. Its main product line was wooden bins for fruits and vegetables in half-ton and

1-ton sizes.

            Chris continued to operate both his building business and Colac Pallet. He employed a handful of people in the pallet company. Chris would come in to the pallet shop at night with his wife, Marilyn, to cut lumber for the next day, load trucks and do paper work.

            Chris operated the business from his own property for nine years before moving to a site in Colac in 1985. Shortly afterward he began manufacturing pallets for Loscam, which propelled the company forward.

            Another significant milestone occurred in 1989. In a cooperative venture with AKD Softwoods, a pine sawmill business, Chris landed a big contract to supply export crates for a Ford Motor Co. plant.

            Chris expanded the business into lumber production and lumber remanufacturing and subsequently changed the name of the company to CM Timber Processing; the letters CM stood for Chris and Marilyn. The company name later was abbreviated to CMTP.

            Chris continued to operate his building business, but he sold it in 1996 to focus his efforts on CMTP. He made significant investments in machinery and equipment for CMTP to automate the company’s operations and improve efficiency, and the company continued to grow to become a leading manufacturer of pallets and containers.

            The Colac plant was moved to a new location about a mile away after out-growing the previous site. The new plant was designed around ‘lean manufacturing’ principles, and the move proved to be a good one for the business.

            The standard size pallet used in Australia is an 1165x1165 mm stringer pallet; they are used by both Loscam and CHEP domestically. Export pallets are typically 1100x1100 mm.

            CMTP buys radiata pine lumber from major Australian sawmills – Carter Holt Harvey, Hyne Timber and AKD Softwoods. For customers that specify hardwood, it buys Victorian ash. It buys dry as well as green lumber; the majority of dry material is used for ISPM-15 certified export pallets. Lumber is purchased in long lengths and cut to length and remanufactured in the company’s plants.

            Before acquiring a majority interest in Aspect Packaging, CMTP purchased the Aspect Packaging plant in Adelaide, South Australia earlier in 2008. The plant produced pallets and crates and also supplied packaging materials, such as cardboard, corflute, tapes, and bubble wrap. The acquired plant immediately began operating under the CMTP name as the company sought to spread its brand into South Australia.

            The Adelaide plant consists of two buildings with about 26,000 square feet and employs about 20 full-time workers. Shortly after acquiring the site, the Meades added a Viking Champion nailing machine to increase production and efficiency as well as a Holtec package saw. Previously, workers at the plant assembled pallets by hand with pneumatic nailing tools and jigs.

            The acquisition later in the year of a majority interest in Aspect Packaging added four more facilities, including two in Melbourne in the state of Victoria.

            The main plant in Braeside, a suburb of Melbourne, occupies 5 acres, boasts five buildings and 174,000 square feet and employs a staff of about 70 people. It serves a number of customers in the automotive industry and supplies pallets, crates, cardboard cartons, corflute packaging and more. (Corflute is a brand of twin-wall polypropylene sheeting used for converting into signage, packaging, displays and other industrial applications.)

            CMTP recently added a Holtec package saw to the Braeside plant and is in the process of adding an Erjo chipper to process waste wood material into chips.

            The plant is also equipped with a GAP nailing machine and a Rayco nailing machine for assembling pallets as well as four machines from Yoogali, an Australian engineering company. At a Yoogali machine, two workers with pneumatic nailers will manually nail the bottom face of a pallet, and the machine will flip it over; after they nail the top face, the machine automatically stacks the finished pallet. Working with a Yoogali this way, two men can assemble 350-450 pallets per shift. Small orders and odd-size pallets are assembled by hand with the aid of jigs.

            The other facility in suburban Melbourne is located at Laverton; it has one building containing about 43,000 square feet and employs 14 people. This plant specializes in manufacturing wood crates, including crates for air freight of livestock, and on-site packaging of machinery and equipment.

            CMTP also has a small shop in Lavington, New South Wales, where four workers produce pallets and crates.

            Finally, it operates a sawmill in Tasmania, which is an island state off the southeast coast of Australia. The mill

is dedicated to making pre-cut components for pallets; the materials are shipped to the other CMTP plants. The mill in Tasmania also produces some finished pallets.

            The Colac plant consists of four buildings with a combined 65,000 square feet; it employs 30 workers.

            The Colac plant is equipped with a Baker Products scragg mill and four-head bandsaw system to process plywood cores into pallet stock. The plant also is equipped with a System TM optimizing cross-cut saw and a Holtec package saw for cutting lumber to length. A Viking Champion and a Storti nailing machine are used for assembling pallets automatically; the Storti machine is dedicated to building pallets for Loscam, which it does at the rate of about 2,500 pallets per shift. Other equipment includes an Australian-made line for painting pallets, a semi-automated machine for assembling produce bins, three System TM lumber stackers, a notching machine, two moulders, and a multi-rip saw used to rip waste material into kindling firewood.

            The Colac plant has two dust collection systems and a silo to store sawdust. When it is full, a semi-trailer is parked underneath and the sawdust is emptied into the truck. It is supplied to a contractor who sells it to farmers for livestock bedding. The wood shavings are blown into a shed; the shavings are packaged on-site by another company into compressed bales and sold for animal bedding. An Erjo chipper processes some wood waste material into chips that are sold for mulch. Finally, some trim ends are ripped and packaged into kindling wood that is supplied to another company for eventual sale to homeowners.

            CMTP uses Stanley-Bostitch collated and bulk nails for assembling pallets at its facilities. Saw blades and cutting tools generally are purchased from Excision Saws and Accurate Timber Products.

            At Colac, the company uses the M1 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software program on its computers. It was written for manufacturing businesses and offers information services for payroll, stock and inventory control, accounts and other functions. The company also is in the process of implementing a new program called Greentree for the Melbourne plants.

            Chris grew the business primarily through word of mouth and his company’s reputation for good service. Over the years the company stenciled its CMTP name on produce bins as a way of advertising. It has recently developed a Web site because more vendors use the Internet to search for suppliers.

            Chris is based in Colac, but he travels between the company’s locations, overseeing the businesses; he increasingly is focusing on overall business strategy.

            Travis, 28, joined the business in 2000. Initially he worked on the factory floor and later in sales. He now is general manger of the Colac plant and also is involved in sales and buying lumber. Xavier, 26, joined the company in 2007 after working in other manufacturing jobs and now is production manager of the Colac plant.

            Employees are paid an hourly wage, and they are evaluated at least twice a year for their job performance, punctuality, safety and reliability. All work stations have set targets that employees are expected to meet, and they are paid based on reaching the targets consistently. Over the years CMTP has conducted some ‘financial literacy’ training for employees that is based around the “Great Game of Business” by Jack Stack.