If you’re shipping goods out of the United States, heat treating (HT) of your pallets for fumigation purposes needs to be part of your shipping procedures.
Since March of 2002, the IPPC (International Plant Protection Committee) has set guidelines for regulating wood packaging material in international trade. The ISPM-15 Standard applies to both softwood (coniferous) and hardwood (non-coniferous) packaging. Both types of wood must be either heat treated to 56° C for 30 minutes or fumigated (MB) with methyl bromide.
According to the WTO (World Trade Organization), the following countries have begun to enforce the ISPM-15 Standard: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Columbia, Costa Rica, the European Union, Guatemala, India, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, and Turkey. Shipments from The United States to Canada are exempt.
When your shipments are treated properly and are in compliance, they will be allowed to display the IPPC certification symbol.
This symbol will include:
• A two letter ISO country code. For instance, AU for Australia or US for the United States.
• The 000 portion of the symbol represents the unique certification number issued for AQIS (Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service) to the treatment provider or wood packaging manufacturer. Inclusion of this certification number ensures that the wood packaging material can be traced back to the treatment provider or manufacturer.
• YY is the treatment abbreviation.
• HT is the code for heat treatment to a minimum of 56° C for a minimum of 30 minutes.
• MB is the code for methyl bromide fumigation.
Inclusion of this symbol will make it easier for your shipments to move easily once they arrive at their destination.
The HT Sanitizer Continuous Heat Treat System comes with MicroDAQ temperature data loggers along with Hoboware recording software technology utilized for ISPM-15 certification.
- Probed data loggers are utilized to record time and temperature of wood in oven during treatment (Figure A).
- The data logger probe tip is inserted into the center depth of the pallet stringer after drilling a pilot hole (Figure B).
- After the data logger and pallet are out of the oven, the end cap of the data logger is unscrewed. (Figure C) A mini-USB cable is plugged into the end of the data logger connected to a computer.
- The time and temperature data is downloaded to the Hoboware software program that lists the data in columnar and graphical format (Figure D). The temperature report is then printed out and filed for the monthly ISPM-15 audits.
- The data loggers, USB cable, ISPM-15 Record Keeping manual, and software are included in the purchase price of the machine along with our staff being on site during installation and training to work with your local auditing company for your machine’s ISPM-15 certification.
