APS vs Cabka Recycled Plastic Pallet Comparison

Ask a plastic pallet supplier about sustainability and the first word you will hear is recycled. Cabka has a long claim on that word. It was founded in Germany in 1994 as a recycler of mixed plastic waste, and it opened a recycling and production plant near St. Louis in 2005. Our Smart Pallets are 100 percent recycled HDPE too. So the two pallets part ways at the sale, not the resin. Cabka sells you the pallet. We lease you a program, with a sensor in every pallet as standard.

APS vs Cabka Verdict

Same Recycled Start, Two Different Deals

Cabka, listed on Euronext Amsterdam since 2022, says it makes most of its pallets from recycled plastic and sells them by quotation. Once you buy, the fleet is yours to run, with tracking as an option and a buyback program at end of life.

APS designs and manages custom pallet leasing programs for closed-loop partners. Every Smart Pallet is 100 percent recycled HDPE with a sensor module built in, and the whole program is one flat monthly cost designed to price at or below what you pay for wood.

Our verdict turns on where the pallet goes after your dock. If your pallets cycle between facilities you can name and the freight on them matters, lease the program. For export, one-way freight or retail nesting, a Cabka pallet is a sensible purchase.

In a closed loop where someone will eventually ask what happened to the load, a pallet that reports back beats a pallet you have to count.

Cabka Recycled Plastic Pallets vs APS Smart Pallets

Two Recycled Pallets, Traced to the Source

Both companies sell recycled plastic pallets as the answer to wood, and both can show their work. Recycled covers more than one kind of material, though. The FTC's Green Guides count material diverted from the waste stream during manufacturing (pre-consumer) or after consumer use (post-consumer).

Where Cabka's Recycled Plastic Comes From

Mixed Plastic Waste, Recycled In-House

Cabka was founded in 1994 in Weira, Germany, and credits itself with pioneering the recycling of post-consumer and post-industrial mixed-plastic waste. In 1998 it began selling what it calls the first lightweight, nestable plastic pallets made from recycled materials. Its 2025 annual report lists its feedstock as post-consumer and post-industrial plastic waste, end-of-life products bought back from customers, and already recycled material sourced from supply chain partners.

The figures are Cabka's own. In 2025 it processed 121 kilotons of plastic waste at a recycled raw material inflow rate of 86 percent. It uses primary material where customers need stringent hygienic standards, a small portion of production by its account, and its Hygienic pallets are food grade virgin plastic, with recycled versions for non-food use.

For U.S. buyers, the name that matters is Cabka North America, Inc., in Hazelwood, Missouri, outside St. Louis. Cabka opened its first full-service recycling and production plant near St. Louis in 2005, and its 2025 annual report lists St. Louis as its one U.S. factory. The 48 by 40 Nest US5 and NestRack pages list their pallet weights in polypropylene.

Where APS's HDPE Comes From

Bottles, Containers & Industrial Scrap

Every APS Smart Pallet is 100 percent recycled HDPE, post-consumer and post-industrial, sourced from across the recovery stream and not just from worn-out pallets. Bottles, containers and industrial scrap all go in. HDPE is the plastic in milk jugs, bleach bottles and cutting boards.

Our manufacturing partner processes roughly 60 million pounds of recycled plastic a year and can grind 240,000 pounds in a single 24-hour period. Our post on where pallet plastic comes from traces the bottles and scrap behind a pallet.

The sheet below scores three groups out of ten: material and sourcing, data, and program and ownership.

Material comes out even, because both companies use post-consumer and post-industrial plastic and both take pallets back at end of life. The gap opens on what each pallet reports and on whether you buy it or lease it.

Two points per Yes and none per No, five rows per group, so each group is out of 10. Recycled-content and volume figures are each company's own published numbers. Cabka's data marks follow the tracking options listed on its product and Track & Trace pages.

Post Consumer Recycled Plastic & Pallet Durability

Does Recycled Plastic Hold Up Under Load?

Buyers ask us whether a pallet made from post consumer recycled plastic will carry the same load, for as many trips, as one molded from new resin. The research gives a qualified yes.

A 2023 study in Resources, Conservation and Recycling melt-extruded HDPE 10, 20 and 50 times in the lab, then made blends that were half virgin HDPE. The blends tested close to virgin in tensile properties, while HDPE extruded 50 times on its own came out 13 percent lower in stiffness and strength. A 2020 study of extruded hollow sections found recycled HDPE less stiff and lower in tensile yield strength, with no significant difference in ultimate tensile strength and higher flexural strength. Neither study tested a pallet.

That is why both companies talk about trips, not resin. Cabka's 2025 annual report says plastic pallets have been proven to endure an average of 200 or more logistic trips, against about 5 for wooden pallets, and its site calls ISO 8611 a seal of quality for pallets it subjects to regular product tests. APS Smart Pallets are built for roughly 100 to 200+ trips before recycling, 10 times the service life of wood. Our plastic pallet durability statistics post walks through the sources behind numbers like these.

Durable plastic pallets also hold their shape. An APS pallet is dimensionally consistent to under 1 percent, against 8 to 10 percent variance for wood, and matches wood in load-bearing capacity at up to 30 percent less weight. Judged on the pallet and not the resin, a recycled plastic pallet from either company is a long way from the wood it replaces.

Nestable Plastic Pallets vs Rackable Lease Pallets

Built to Stack Empty, or Built to Stay in the Loop

Cabka has sold recycled nestable pallets since 1998. Nestable plastic pallets have hollow legs that drop into one another when empty, so a stack of returns takes less trailer and floor space. Cabka says its Nest pallets need up to 4 times less space in storage and transport, and that nestable models typically carry medium to light loads of around 3,000 kg static.

In the 48 by 40 size it sells the Nest US5, a nine-foot pallet rated 3,000 kg static and 1,400 kg dynamic, about 6,600 and 3,100 pounds by our conversion. For racking it offers the NestRack, a nestable pallet on runners rated 1,000 kg in the rack, about 2,200 pounds.

A closed-loop lease pallet is chosen for a different job. It carries loads between sites you control, rides conveyors and feeds automated lines, then cycles back through the same loop. APS Smart Pallets match wood in load-bearing capacity, stay consistent to under 1 percent, and are automation ready.

The ratings are our editorial read of the evidence in this post: what each pallet is built for, what it records on its own, and whether it is expected back. Cabka takes retail display and export outright, with nestable and one-way designs made for those jobs.

Buying vs Leasing Sustainable Pallets

A Quote for the Fleet, or One Monthly Number

Search for recycled plastic pallets for sale and you will land on manufacturers like Cabka, which sell by quotation. Its product pages carry no prices, and its Total Cost of Ownership calculator builds what Cabka calls the 5-year financial case for switching to its plastic solutions.

That is the purchase model. You buy a fleet, book it as capital and spread the cost over every trip it survives. A bought pallet that goes missing is a new purchase, and tracking is something you add. At end of life Cabka runs a buyback program, and its 2025 annual report says a buyback clause can now be written into supply contracts. All of it is yours to manage.

Sustainable pallets on a lease work from the other end. APS charges one all-inclusive monthly cost covering the pallet, the embedded sensor module, exception reporting and visibility. There is no capital purchase and no replacement cost, and the lease is designed to price at or below what you pay for wood pallet programs.

What each model includes, from APS's lease terms and Cabka's product, Track & Trace and annual report pages. Neither company publishes a price.

Tracking, Recovery & End of Life

Where the Pallet Is, Then Where It Goes

A recycled pallet only stays out of a landfill if it comes home. Cabka's Track & Trace page opens on that problem: reusable packaging disappears into the supply chain every day. The service tracks Cabka products with IoT, RFID, BLE or barcode technology, from simple checkpoint scans to assets that report their own position. Its product pages list tracking for location and temperature as optional.

An APS Smart Pallet has its tracking built in. The embedded sensor module reports cellular GPS location plus temperature, humidity and shock. It stays quiet while conditions are normal, and when the pallet moves or a threshold is crossed it logs a timestamped, geolocated event and Pulse routes the exception to the right person. Every program is a closed loop with 100 percent retrieval capability, and every handoff adds to an independent chain of custody.

Then comes the last trip. Plastic pallet recycling works best when the material stays in one stream. Cabka's buyback program returns end-of-life products to its own recycling process. A retired APS pallet is shredded and goes back into the APS HDPE stream, and our APS sustainability program page explains how that loop runs.

The national numbers show why the loop matters. The EPA plastics recycling figures put the 2018 U.S. plastics recycling rate at 8.7 percent, with 27 million tons of plastic sent to landfill that year. HDPE recycling does better. The EPA puts the 2018 rate for HDPE natural bottles at 29.3 percent, which still leaves most of them unrecycled. A pallet tracked, retrieved and shredded back into its own HDPE stream skips those odds.

Best Recycled Pallet Option for Your Operation

Pick by Where Your Pallets Go

Either supplier gets you out of wood. Our page on why plastic pallets win covers that half of the decision. The other half is how you want to hold plastic pallets: as an asset you buy and manage, or as a program that reports back.

If your pallets leave for good or stand nested on a store floor, the Cabka card fits. If they cycle between sites you control and carry something worth watching, the APS card does.

Cabka's strengths are real. It has made pallets from recycled plastic since 1998, publishes load ratings model by model and, by its own account, has supplied pooling operators in Europe and North America for more than 15 years.

Our side has two honest cons. A lease is a monthly commitment, and it needs a closed loop to work. Owning a Cabka fleet trades those for capital up front, losses you replace and tracking you add.

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