If you’re like me, you’ve never heard of EPAL, which is the European Pallet Association. But at this link about them you can see they are at the center of helping European Railways maintain a European-wide quality assurance and inspection standard for the EURO pallet.

In a news release today, EPAL announced that in collaboration with GS1 it has completed a pilot program aiming to attain improved control of the production and repair of pallets, the authentication of individual pallets and help reduce the number of counterfeit pallets. The full text of their short announcement can be seen here.

My point in mentioning this is that this news, in my opinion, is part of a recent onslaught of reports lately all pointing to greater GS1 momentum and adoption velocity. It’s impossible to read these things every day as I do and think GS1 compliance can be avoided, averted or delayed. Plus, in this and so many other instances, the entities involved are national and international infrastructure players in the form of organizations and/or state-run or mandated programs. This time, for once, it looks like everyone is climbing aboard and in agreement over the ultimate destination.