Oliver Richter may not be a name you recognise but he was responsible for the way companies would come to move their goods around the world, reshaping global supply chains into something smarter, more efficient, and inherently sustainable. In fact, his contribution to the industry led to Richter being posthumously inducted into the Logistics Hall of Fame, joining the ranks of Jeff Bezos and Henry Ford - a fitting tribute to someone whose foresight and ingenuity transformed an entire industry. 

Australia-born, Richter is best known for championing the pallet pooling system, a simple but powerful idea that allowed companies around the world to share and reuse pallets in a closed-loop system. This system enabled companies to focus on their core business while sharing pallets, crates, and containers, ultimately cutting down waste, lowering costs, and creating more circular supply chains. Today, this concept is central to Brambles’ CHEP network, which has ~350 million reusable assets connecting producers, manufacturers and retailers, circulating across 60 countries. 

Oliver Richter joined Brambles in 1965 as a commercial manager, just a few years after the company had acquired CHEP (then known as the Commonwealth Handling Equipment Pool) facilities in Sydney, Brisbane, and Townsville from the Australian Government. Ironically, Brambles was originally more interested in CHEP’s forklifts than its pallets but Richter saw something much bigger. He believed in the power of industrial services, saying “The canvas is as broad as you can make it.”

Drawing inspiration from CHEP’s origins as a wartime logistics solution developed by the U.S. military in Australia, Richter envisioned the closed-loop rental system on a global scale. Fuelled by his belief in the system - and no small measure of determination - he would subsequently introduce the pallet pooling and leasing model first to the UK via a joint-venture in the mid-70s, before shepherding CHEP’s expansion into continental Europe, South Africa and North America.

By the time he retired in 1992, Richter had served as CEO, Chair, and Deputy Chair at Brambles, helping expand CHEP globally. Today, his legacy lives on in CHEP’s ongoing commitment to circular logistics and Brambles’ position as one of the world’s most sustainable companies.

Volker Sdunzig, (then) SVP of CHEP Central and Eastern Europe, receiving the Logistics Hall of Fame award on behalf of Mr Richter and CHEP from German Minister for Digital Affairs and Transport, Dr. Volker Wissing in November 2022.

CHEP Australia’s Country General Manager, Renee Holbrook, and National Account Manager of Retail, Fabian Miebach presenting the Logistics Hall of Fame award to Oliver Richter’s wife, Pam Richter, and son, Paul Richter.