Hardwood species are easily available in India and pallets of these woods are widely used for domestic packaging. The main difference between hardwood and softwood is that hardwood trees are typically slower growers and are considered angiosperm, deciduous trees (shed their leaves annually), which leads to a denser wood, whereas softwood trees are gymnosperms, meaning they are evergreen trees (do not shed their leaves).

 

Species such as Neem, Silver, Poplar, Rubber, Nilgri and many more. There are 83 such species that can be grown, sawn and used for packaging and wood based industry applications. While the appearance of each wood species will differ (just like human beings of different color of skin) their properties are largely the same. Hardwoods have fantastic structural strength, bending stiffness and density. 

 

These wood are sawn to required size from round logs, sun dried naturally and then assembled to make a pallet. Fumigation or heat treatment are recommended for these. One needs to understand why these methods are used and what is the rationale for the same.