Pallets for retail distribution
From the city centre and Gunwharf down to Albert Road and the high streets at Cosham and Waterlooville, retail generates a constant two-way flow of pallets: stock arriving and empties piling up at the back.
Stock in, empties out
Most retailers do not buy many pallets — they receive them. What they need is somewhere for the empties to go, and that is the more common conversation we have with shops, wholesalers and the businesses supplying them.
Where retailers and wholesalers do buy, it is usually for stockroom storage, for moving goods between branches, or for palletising their own outbound deliveries to trade customers. Sound used pallets cover most of that.
Display and shopfit use
Pallet timber has become a standard material for display fixtures, market stalls, pop-up builds and shopfitting, and that is a genuinely different order: appearance matters, quantities are exact and the date is fixed. Tell us it is for display and we will sort for look rather than sending the nearest usable stack.
The same applies to seasonal and event retail across the city, where the build goes up for a short period and comes down again.
The practical problem with retail addresses
Shops sit on high streets, in pedestrianised zones and in managed centres with loading windows, service yards and access rules. That is the part worth sorting before ordering: where the vehicle can stop, when it is allowed to be there, and who will be on site to take the load.
Small, well-timed drops work far better in retail than large ones, and the same is true in reverse when we are clearing pallets away.