by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Ahold Delhaize, which operates supermarkets in Europe and the US (‘Stop & Shop’ and ‘Food Lion’) is on track to meet a 20 percent US online sales growth target this year as it opens automated grocery distribution points along the East Coast, chief executive Frans Muller said in an interview.
In October 2018 PostNL announced long-term goals to deliver emission-free in 25 Dutch city centers by 2025, and deliver emission-free in the last-mile throughout the Benelux by 2030. In their new annual report, PostNL announces more actions towards becoming green in city logistics. Cleaner vehicles Continuous investment in cleaner vehicles has helped reduce emissions from the …
Shipment Zero is Amazon’s vision to make all Amazon shipments net zero carbon, with 50% of all shipments net zero by 2030. Dave Clark, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations & Customer Service blogs about it on the Amazon blog.
Ford has launched a pilot trial of a last-mile delivery service in London that could combine logistic solutions using light commercial vehicles with cycle and even pedestrian couriers. The trial will be conducted in collaboration with parcel delivery courier Gnewt by Menzies Distribution.
Dutch Peter Appel Transport, Albert Heijn, DAF Trucks, Simon Loos, and TNO are testing driving electric trucks-with-trailers in cities. As part of the test, not only fully electric trucks are used, but also plug-in hybrid trucks, a European first. The partners want to determine which functional and operational requirements they have to meet in order to deliver …
In 2018 Ikea made a bold pledge. By 2025, the company will deliver every item worldwide by electric vehicle. It started with a full switch to EVs in five cities: New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Amsterdam, and Shanghai by 2020.
Deutsche Post stops testing several new delivery technologies, says CEO Frank Appel in an interview in Tagesspiegel. In the foreseeable future, no drones will be used and no parcels will be delivered in the trunk of cars and behind the house door. Consumer interest is not big enough for profitable use of the new technology.
Last-mile delivery has created a continuing flow of issues that couriers and logistics companies have been working on for a long time. Recently, retailers have taken the issue into their own hands in attempts to ease the last mile headache themselves.
Amazon presented good results for 2018 despite increasing cost of fulfillment. Cost, as a percentage of sales, increased from 21% in 2017 to 24% in 2018. In 2011 fulfillment cost were only 11% of sales. US market is profitable, international not yet.
UPS has joined the coalition of the world’s largest consumer product companies and international recycling company TerraCycle to unveil an innovative reusable and returnable system for managing consumer product packaging. The system, called Loop, will be tested in Paris and New York as a first step toward full implementation in consumer markets.