Pallet Networks Environment
On the road to greener logistics
Despite relatively tough trading conditions across the board, the need for businesses to be increasingly sustainable and environmentally friendly remains as important as ever. Adrian Russell, managing director of palletised freight network Pall-Ex, explains why he believes the very nature of pallet networks helps many towards that goal.
W
hen you think of green industries, logistics is not necessarily the first that springs to mind. However,
the image of the sector is improving and the overall awareness of sustainability and environmental impact is getting significantly better. To a large extent, I believe that pallet networks have played a crucial role in this. The very purpose of such networks is to reduce the number and length of jour- neys that a haulier is required to make. If you take Pall-Ex’s hub-and-spoke model as an example, it is easy to see why. The concept is a relatively simple one. It in- volves members collecting freight from cus- tomers and delivering it to a central hub. It is then sorted and loaded onto the ve- hicle of the network member respon- sible for the destination postcode. The process of trunking and consolidating freight ensures a much stronger load profile for lorries and trailers. In fact, fig- ures show that the average vehicle-fill for pallet net- works is 73%, compared to just 51% for conven- tional haulage systems. At Pall-Ex, we are proud of the fact that we exceed the average, reaching 90%. This reduc- tion in the number of ‘empty jour-
24 May 2012 Storage Handling Distribution
neys’ results in heightened environmental efficiency and reduces the overall number of vehicles required for the distribution process. The Department of Transport calculated that pallet networks help to take approximately 837 ve- hicles off the road every day. If you equate that to both
cost and CO2 sav- ings, the results
are impressive. However, despite this strong base,
everyone in the
industry is upping their game, so the pallet network model has simply become a solid
starting point. We are seeing more bespoke services being developed to help network customers boost their own sustainability levels and lessen environmental impact, and this is certainly a trend that I see continuing.
CUMULATIVE EFFORT
Sometimes the simplest of actions can make a big difference. In our own network, we operate Eco Drive, which has seen us partner with waste recycling specialist The Greenhouse. The process involves Pall- Ex taking back the waste packaging from deliveries and recycling it for customers, saving them the time and the cost of doing it them- selves. The return journey from the delivery is used to deal with it, so no extra emissions are caused. It also takes away the hassle of having another vehicle coming
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