Tension is building between Brambles chairman John Mullen and the head of equities at Perpetual, Paul Skamvougeras, over a potential $US700 million ($950 million) investment in a new plastic pallet pool in the United States for its fastest growing retail customer, Costco.

Mullen considers the deal to be the centrepiece of a digital reinvention of Brambles’ pallets business, designed to drive “a significant and sustainable uplift in shareholder value creation”.