The history of Faber Group dates back to 1891 when the Dutch Halbertsma family started producing wooden butter barrels, and to 1935 when the Faber family started a similar business in Assen. Around 1950, the allied forces introduced forklifts to Europe, which created a demand for wooden pallets. Pallet production eventually became the core business for both families, who merged in 1992 to form the Faber Halbertsma Group. Changes to environmental legislation soon led the group to discover a new angle to the pallet business: pallet pooling. After a number of acquisitions, the group decided in 2020 to terminate pallet production to fully focus on circular load carrier pooling. In 2021 the company was renamed Faber Group. That year we also introduced our purpose “Carrying impact” and revamped our company values, making these “Care, Dare and Deliver”.

The Faber Group companies
• IPP provides sustainable closed pallet and box pooling services for the FMCG and recycling industry, covering most of Europe.
• PAKi is one of Europe’s leading sustainable open pooling services for exchangeable standardised load carriers, such as Euro pallets, for a broad range of customers and industries.
• PRS is the main provider of sustainable closed pallet pooling services to the European polymer industry.
• vPOOL offers sustainable open pooling services for food grade load carriers throughout Europe.
• SATIM is specialised in procurement of sustainable timber and load carriers, supporting our other divisions.

Our purpose: Carrying Impact
We have a responsibility towards our customers and future generations to provide high-quality reusable and sustainable products and services. It is our ambition to have a positive impact with our logistics solutions for supply chains. We bring circularity into logistics and make being circular a service in a shared economy. This way we are carrying impact.

Our values: Care, Dare, Deliver
Care: we feel responsible for people, products and the environment.
Dare: entrepreneurship, passion and teamwork challenge us to go further.
Deliver: we are motivated to simply deliver sustainable results.

We are one group driven by the same purpose

Our closed & open pooling systems 

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Carrying impact with circular load carrier pooling services

We collaborate across divisions to share knowledge, best practices and resources: we have cross-divisional communities, for example in HR and Marketing, for which the Faber Group headquarters has an initiating and coordinating role. This way we make most out of our resources and we create synergies and efficiencies. Working with colleagues across businesses and in markets throughout Europe to learn and inspire each other also helps make for an interesting working environment.

As a family of companies, Faber Group as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Though our divisions use different pooling systems and serve different customers in multiple markets, we are one group driven by the same purpose, “Carrying impact”, and the same values of “Care, Dare and Deliver”.

Digitalisation supports us in our current business, enabling us to better follow the movements of our load carriers so that we can optimise their usage in the most efficient way; this both drives our sustainability ambitions and profitable business. By providing insights to our customers on stocks and balances of load carriers, we also help them improve their supply chain, reduce their footprint and cut costs.

Furthermore, we have embraced three of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and incorporated these into our own Faber Development goals, which also focus on where it matters most: reducing the footprint of our logistics operations and optimising the usage and material lifespan of our circular load carriers. Our ambition is to reduce our CO₂ emissions per trip/barter with 30% by 2030. We do this in partnership with our customers, suppliers and other stakeholders to carry impact throughout the supply chains.

Our business is sustainable and circular: most of our load carriers are produced from certified sustainable timber that will last for a long time and can be returned to nature at the end of its service life. By providing the load carriers to our customers on a pay-per-use basis, they don’t need to invest in these assets themselves and can focus on their core business. In turn, we make sure the load carriers are used in an optimal way, and they are properly maintained to keep them in good condition throughout their lifespan. We make the most impact by improving the sustainability of our customers’ supply chains by providing them with circular load carrier solutions. So, the more our business grows, the more sustainable impact we make – our ambition is to reduce at least 58 kiloton CO₂ emissions for our customers per year by 2030. 

Sustainability is at the core of our business and is in our hearts. Together with value creation and digitalisation it makes our business strategy, which we call the “Green Triangle”, where each side strengthens the other two. Together these drive our sustainable impact, while at the same time delivering profitable business growth.

Load carriers, like pallets and boxes, are indispensable for supply chains to function in a 24/7 and global economy. Most of the goods you have at home likely once travelled on a pallet. Pallets might be not the most visible part of a supply chain, but without them it would be impossible to quickly and efficiently transport goods. By providing circular, reusable load carriers on a pay per-use basis, we work with approximately 700 employees to contribute to the sustainable impact of our customers’ business and make our own positive impact as well.

In our business we speak of Closed and Open pooling. Closed pooling is a system for reuse in which reusable load carriers are circulated by IPP and PRS without change of ownership, meaning that IPP and PRS remain the owner of the load carriers. Open pooling, used by PAKi and vPOOL, is a system for reuse in which reusable, exchangeable load carriers circulate amongst an unspecified number of system participants. Due to the exchangeability of the load carriers, “normal” ownership is replaced by the “right of return” of a similar load carrier.

Collaboration

Family of companies

Digitalisation

Reducing our footprint

Circular in itself

Sustainability at the core

Global 24/7 economy

Closed and Open pooling

Faber Group is an international family company specialised in circular load carrier pooling services. With several specialist pooling businesses, we have a robust, agile and sustainable network across Europe to streamline the supply chain. Together we provide sustainable, reliable, cost-effective pooling services for pallets and boxes to virtually all industries throughout Europe. We facilitate this by sharing our logistic resources and investing in innovation and digitalisation. It is our ambition to have a positive impact with our logistics solutions for supply chains. We bring circularity into logistics and make being circular a service in a shared economy. This way we carry impact.

There is so much more to load carrying

If you’ve ever wondered at the supermarket how all these products get there, we can answer “we played a part”. We enable the “sharing” of load carriers such as pallets, crates and boxes to optimise the transportation process in demanding supply chains. Welcome to Faber Group.