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Pallet C e nt ral • July -Aug u st 2 0 26 2 1 What's Weighing On Members Beyond The Balance Sheet A smaller but vocal group of respondents pointed past day-to-day operations entirely to bigger-picture economic and policy uncertainty—tariffs, inflation, interest rates, and recession risk. Views on the causes varied, and unsurprisingly for a topic like this, opinions on the politics behind it varied too. What members agreed on was the effect: uncertainty is making it harder to plan, price, and invest with any confidence. "Market is down from prior years and continues to be slow on new sales," said Tosh Brinkerhoff of Rotochopper—a reminder that for capital-equipment suppliers serving the pallet industry, hesitation ripples downstream too. The Boom Line Strip away the individual complaints and a simple story emerges: input costs are rising faster than the industry can pass them through, and a subset of competitors is making that worse by pricing below what the market can sustain. Demand isn't uniformly bad, but it's unpredictable enough that members can't plan around it with any confidence. And a layer of macro and policy uncertainty sits on top of all of it, weighing on sentiment even where the hard numbers haven't caught up yet. None of that is a crisis call. It's a pulse check—one snapshot from 34 members willing to speak up. But the consistency across dozens of independent, unprompted comments is hard to wave away. If nothing else, it's a useful gut check for any member wondering whether they're the only one feeling squeezed. ey're not. irty-four voices is a start, not the full picture. Did we get it right? If your experience this year looks different— better, worse, or just different—Woodpack Global wants to hear it. Reach out to let us know where this snapshot matches what you're seeing on the ground, and where it doesn't. Drop a note to Annette Ferri, Vice President of Communications, at annette@woodpackglobal.org. Editor's note: is article draws on open-ended survey responses from Woodpack Global's June 2026 member pulse check. ematic analysis of the comments was AI- assisted. All quotes are presented as submitted, lightly trimmed for length, and attributed only where members agreed to be named. Requests from respondents to remain anonymous have been honored. Pallet C e nt ral • S e ptem be r- O ctobe r 2 0 26 2 1

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