Distribution

Badly maintained or poorly driven vehicles can have a damaging impact on the environment. In a Utopian world, perhaps, there would be no vehicles and no carbon emissions at all - but then apetito would not be getting its products to its customers and would not be in business. John Bromfield is apetito's Customer Services Manager for Transport, his job involves making apetito's transport movements as environmentally friendly as possible:

This year we are renewing much of our transport fleet. This is a real opportunity. We are therefore specifying Euro V compliant engines for our new trucks. These are only just becoming commercially available and will significantly reduce the emissions of our vehicles on the roads. We also have six double-decker lorries, which can take nearly twice the load of a single one for only 60 per cent of the fuel. They are important as they reduce the number of lorry movements that have to be made and thereby reduce road congestion, the single biggest environmental and social impact of food transportation.

One major change we have implemented at apetito to reduce our environmental impact is the introduction of outbases and cross-loading - the principle of more depots, fewer miles - which has reduced our mileage significantly.

We use Paragon software to plan our delivery routes as efficiently as possible. It tells us how well we're doing with our delivery organisation and helps to make sure that we don't have two lorries travelling the same route except where strictly necessary.

At the present time most of our vehicles run back to the depot empty. However, we are actively exploring ways in which we can develop backhaul opportunities, for example bringing raw goods from suppliers to Wiltshire.

Having clean, green trucks is only part of the story. How they are driven makes a big difference to how environmentally friendly they are. An operational trainer has recently joined our team to work with the 50 drivers. He is sitting in the cab with the drivers, not testing them but suggesting ways in which they can drive more efficiently.

Transport cannot help but leave some form of carbon footprint, but we are serious in our efforts to achieve as few and as friendly transport miles as possible within the constraints of running a profitable and successful business.

John Bromfield
Customer Services Manager for Transport