Denik Wood Enterprise, one of the country’s largest wood treatment companies, recently received help from the Department of Science and Technology’s Forest Products Research and Development Institute in rehabilitating its plant in Matalam, North Cotabato.

According to For. Catalino Pabuayon, “Company owner Rennilo Ordinario asked our help because of problems he encountered while treating the raw material for his wooden pallets. The chemicals were not penetrating the wood completely and some parts of his vacuum treatment facility had broken down.”

Pallets are platform devices that hold one or more cargo packages in a group, allowing a load to be transferred and stored as a unit.Along with forklift trucks, pallets make it easier to ship and store all sorts of commodities around the world. The surge in the demand for local wooden pallets began with the onset of globalization in the 1990s.

“Denik Wood Enterprise has been making wooden pallets for almost 20 years now, and has always made sure that its products are either heat or vacuum-treated,” says Pabuayon. “This isin compliance with the International Standards For Phytosanitary Measures No. 15or ISPM 15.

“ISPM 15requires concerned companies to sterilize wood materials used to transport products between countries so as to prevent the international spread of disease and insects that can adversely affect plants and ecosystems. Failure to conform to the directive means that the packaging material will not receive the crucial seal from the International Plant Protection Convention” says Pabuayon.

Denik Wood Enterprise uses as much as 65,000 board feet of wood a month from industrial plantation species and supplies wooden pallets to some of the country’s biggest fruit exporters.