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Month: July 2021

Halfords implements Descartes’ last-mile delivery solution

Posted on by David Priestman

Descartes Systems Group, a global leader in uniting logistics-intensive businesses in commerce, has announced that Halfords, a leading UK automotive products and services retailer, is using Descartes’ last-mile delivery solution to enable dynamic delivery pricing in its customer-facing mobile tyre replacement service and as its new international field service software solution called Avayler.

First metrics show that Halfords’ mobile service business has already been able to improve gross profit by 5% and reduce miles per delivery by 13%.

Descartes’ last mile delivery solution provides an end-to-end platform for home and last-mile delivery operations. The solution spans delivery appointment booking, route planning and execution, mobile proof-of-delivery (POD) and notifications processes. Its delivery appointment schedule is dynamically generated for each customer and time window options are scored. This allows organisations such as Halfords to intelligently control the booking process, which maximises booking density and productivity and enhances the customer experience while minimising costs.

“As part of our innovative ecommerce-based mobile tyre replacement service, we wanted to more accurately reflect the logistics cost of the mobile service when customers were booking service appointments and balance demand with our ability to serve customers,” said Chris McShane, Director, Strategy, Transformation & Business Development at Halfords. “Extending Descartes’ dynamic scheduling solution into Avayler made perfect sense. The solution will allow garages, distributors and other service-based organisations to provide their customer base with unique service appointment pricing as they are making purchases and the ability to optimise customer demand.”

The advanced real-time capabilities of the Descartes solution enable Halfords to offer dynamic delivery pricing that considers existing orders, business objectives, road network, vehicle capacity and service constraints to price delivery appointment options. In addition, Halfords uses Descartes’ forward-looking vehicle capacity information to help adjust its online marketing to ensure it balances demand generation with the ability to service that demand. As a result, Halfords has been able to target pay-per-click marketing spend by matching orders booked with the ability to service more customers in the coming days in particular regions.

After successfully using the Descartes last-mile delivery solution to drive efficiencies in its own operations, Halfords has now integrated it into Avayler, its newly launched, end-to-end, customer-centric field service solution that will be rolled out globally. Avayler will provide other businesses with an end-to-end SaaS solution wherever they offer services whether in store, at garages, workshops, clinics, pop-up sites, in the driveway or across the threshold.

“By using logistics information and constraints in real-time during the customer buying experience, Halfords is taking last-mile delivery strategies and solutions the next level,” said Pol Sweeney, Vice President of UK and Ireland Sales at Descartes. “Home and last-mile delivery and services continue to be market differentiators, but expensive to operate. Halfords’ combination of our dynamic delivery appointment booking with its advanced pricing algorithms and capacity management allow the company to provide one of the most innovative and intuitive field service solutions on the market.”

Toolstation tackles omnichannel challenges with Kӧrber

Posted on by David Priestman

Körber is working with Toolstation, one of Britain’s fastest-growing suppliers of tools, accessories and building supplies to the trade, home improvers and self-builders, to evolve its multichannel capabilities to meet consumer demands. This includes enhancing processes in its Redditch distribution centre while supporting Toolstation’s expanding network of stores.

Toolstation is experiencing significant growth in online and retail orders. As a result, the company outgrew its paper-based processes – leading to a lack of visibility and productivity constraints for the workforce. With its vast range of products, even though broken into warehouse ‘logic zones’, Toolstation was challenged to simultaneously manage smaller, sometimes single, e-commerce orders along with bulk distributions for its stores.

The company needed a solution to increase workforce productivity, simplify picking, increase capacity within its current warehouse and integrate with its existing, proprietary order management system that linked all of its stores. Kӧrber made this possible.

“At Toolstation, our customers and colleagues are at the heart of everything we do. As our business continues to rapidly grow and expand, the needs and expectations of our customers continue to develop and change, be it product range, speed of delivery or convenience. It was really important for us to streamline our processes to make picking easier for our colleagues, improve visibility of workload across our distribution centre and to improve the quality of delivery to our customers.

“When we turned to Körber, we were looking to reduce our in-house complexities to develop a superior solution that would work in our current operation and with our existing IT infrastructure,” said Jim Gowland, Head of Distribution at Toolstation.

Working with Toolstation, Körber designed a solution that uses a warehouse execution system (WES) combined with voice technology to facilitate process change, driving efficiency and accuracy.

The WES builds the basis of operational improvements: It links orders geographically in the warehouse to limit the walk time of each operator. Innovative multi-order picking logic enables picking for multiple customers. Furthermore, product information is used to maximise the fill of each delivery unit, reducing transportation costs as well as amplifying operators’ picking tours.

The voice system improves the pickers’ experience in a different way. Workers hear and verbally confirm instructions step by step via headset. This ensures process conformity, improves productivity and reduces errors. The complexity of Toolstation’s product range also makes onboarding new pickers challenging. Voice technology has a proven record of significantly reducing training time. Due to the accuracy of voice picking, goods-in and put-away of orders delivered to stores will also be significantly improved, freeing up employees’ time for more valuable customer tasks.

A further benefit of the two linked systems is the WES’ ability to log and track each voice-directed action and provide near real-time visibility via a suite of standard dashboards. This gives the warehouse management team true insight into the operation.

“At Körber, we review operations to not only understand the ’what you do’ but more importantly ’the why’,” said Anton du Preez, Chief Sales Officer Software EME, Körber Business Area Supply Chain. “We work with our customers to identify how we can improve a process, and then consider the best technology fit. Along with decades of successful deployments worldwide, we have a wide range of solutions covering the entire supply chain at our disposal, as the complexities in today’s supply chain mean there is no ’one-size-fits-all‘ solution.

“The solution we will be implementing at Toolstation goes to show how much potential an existing warehouse has if the right type of technology is applied.”

Toolstation tackles omnichannel challenges with Kӧrber

Posted on by David Priestman

Körber is working with Toolstation, one of Britain’s fastest-growing suppliers of tools, accessories and building supplies to the trade, home improvers and self-builders, to evolve its multichannel capabilities to meet consumer demands. This includes enhancing processes in its Redditch distribution centre while supporting Toolstation’s expanding network of stores.

Toolstation is experiencing significant growth in online and retail orders. As a result, the company outgrew its paper-based processes – leading to a lack of visibility and productivity constraints for the workforce. With its vast range of products, even though broken into warehouse ‘logic zones’, Toolstation was challenged to simultaneously manage smaller, sometimes single, e-commerce orders along with bulk distributions for its stores.

The company needed a solution to increase workforce productivity, simplify picking, increase capacity within its current warehouse and integrate with its existing, proprietary order management system that linked all of its stores. Kӧrber made this possible.

“At Toolstation, our customers and colleagues are at the heart of everything we do. As our business continues to rapidly grow and expand, the needs and expectations of our customers continue to develop and change, be it product range, speed of delivery or convenience. It was really important for us to streamline our processes to make picking easier for our colleagues, improve visibility of workload across our distribution centre and to improve the quality of delivery to our customers.

“When we turned to Körber, we were looking to reduce our in-house complexities to develop a superior solution that would work in our current operation and with our existing IT infrastructure,” said Jim Gowland, Head of Distribution at Toolstation.

Working with Toolstation, Körber designed a solution that uses a warehouse execution system (WES) combined with voice technology to facilitate process change, driving efficiency and accuracy.

The WES builds the basis of operational improvements: It links orders geographically in the warehouse to limit the walk time of each operator. Innovative multi-order picking logic enables picking for multiple customers. Furthermore, product information is used to maximise the fill of each delivery unit, reducing transportation costs as well as amplifying operators’ picking tours.

The voice system improves the pickers’ experience in a different way. Workers hear and verbally confirm instructions step by step via headset. This ensures process conformity, improves productivity and reduces errors. The complexity of Toolstation’s product range also makes onboarding new pickers challenging. Voice technology has a proven record of significantly reducing training time. Due to the accuracy of voice picking, goods-in and put-away of orders delivered to stores will also be significantly improved, freeing up employees’ time for more valuable customer tasks.

A further benefit of the two linked systems is the WES’ ability to log and track each voice-directed action and provide near real-time visibility via a suite of standard dashboards. This gives the warehouse management team true insight into the operation.

“At Körber, we review operations to not only understand the ’what you do’ but more importantly ’the why’,” said Anton du Preez, Chief Sales Officer Software EME, Körber Business Area Supply Chain. “We work with our customers to identify how we can improve a process, and then consider the best technology fit. Along with decades of successful deployments worldwide, we have a wide range of solutions covering the entire supply chain at our disposal, as the complexities in today’s supply chain mean there is no ’one-size-fits-all‘ solution.

“The solution we will be implementing at Toolstation goes to show how much potential an existing warehouse has if the right type of technology is applied.”

Impact of European flooding mapped

Posted on by Keith McKinley

Data from supply chain visibility platform FourKites shows that the recent flooding in Europe has caused significant damage to the efficiency of the supply chain in Belgium and Germany. We can see delayed shipments and wait times soaring in these two countries for over-the-road transport. The impact has been less severe in the Netherlands.

We can see that late shipments started to grow during the week of 4th July, and reached their peak during the week of 11th July, registering growth of 18% and 15% over the previous week for Belgium and Germany. Late shipment trends in the Netherlands have been more stable compared to other two countries.

The most impacted mode of transport was LTL, where late shipments were up by 32% and 26% for Belgium and Germany during the week of 11th July. The Netherlands followed the suit, though to a lesser extreme, with a 27% increase for the same week.

The impact of delayed shipments for LTL loads translated into increasing dwell times at facilities. We observed increases of 14% and 10% in dwell time for the week of the floods (11th July) for Belgium and Germany, respectively, while dwell time in the Netherlands did not increase at all. This is compared to overall dwell time across Europe declined by 6% during the week of 11th July.

Public heavily in favour of sustainable e-commerce

Posted on by Keith McKinley

Two-thirds of UK consumers now believe the Government should crack down on online delivery CO2 emissions and force online retailers to invest in more sustainable options, a new survey has found.

Seven out of 10 consumers also believe a trustmark could help to ensure CO2 emissions on deliveries are made available to the public. A trustmark could either showcase whether an online retailer is actively reducing or compensating emissions, or could ultimately calculate the emissions per parcel.

Separate research from the World Economic Forum shows delivery emissions could be reduced by as much as 30% by 2030 if the public and private sector works together to prioritise the issue.

The survey, commissioned by e-commerce shipping platform Sendcloud, found a whopping 62% would even opt for alternatives to home delivery if a retailer provided emissions information at checkout, such as choosing to pick-up at a parcel locker compared to home delivery.

Retailers can easily meet this demand by offering a sustainable option alongside existing delivery options and highlighting it with a special icon. A next step could be to pre-select the green delivery option, as previous research shows that the amount of consumers that choose green delivery triples when it is chosen by default.

Luckily retailers don’t have to foot the bill alone, as 8 out of 10 consumers are willing to pay extra for green delivery options.

46% would be open to paying £1 or more on every parcel ordered, representing a significant investment in green delivery from the 2.8 billion UK parcels shipped during the 2019/2020 fiscal year.

“Consumers want more sustainable delivery options, but they also want to see the full effects of their purchases on the environment,” says Rob van den Heuvel, CEO and co-founder at Sendcloud. “Even though governmental action can help to accelerate the greenification of deliveries, there is still a lot retailers and consumers can do themselves.

“Providing information about CO2 emissions and/or pre-ticking the most sustainable choice as the default encourages consumers to choose the most sustainable delivery option at checkout. Even something as simple as a sustainability icon or compensating emissions by planting trees can go a long way in persuading consumers to go green.

“Retailers can do their own part now by communicating clearly to their customers and promoting the impact of their efforts. Retailers need to consciously encourage consumers by giving them the choice to go green and choose clean.”

Public heavily in favour of sustainable e-commerce

Posted on by David Priestman

Two-thirds of UK consumers now believe the Government should crack down on online delivery CO2 emissions and force online retailers to invest in more sustainable options, a new survey has found.

Seven out of 10 consumers also believe a trustmark could help to ensure CO2 emissions on deliveries are made available to the public. A trustmark could either showcase whether an online retailer is actively reducing or compensating emissions, or could ultimately calculate the emissions per parcel.

Separate research from the World Economic Forum shows delivery emissions could be reduced by as much as 30% by 2030 if the public and private sector works together to prioritise the issue.

The survey, commissioned by e-commerce shipping platform Sendcloud, found a whopping 62% would even opt for alternatives to home delivery if a retailer provided emissions information at checkout, such as choosing to pick-up at a parcel locker compared to home delivery.

Retailers can easily meet this demand by offering a sustainable option alongside existing delivery options and highlighting it with a special icon. A next step could be to pre-select the green delivery option, as previous research shows that the amount of consumers that choose green delivery triples when it is chosen by default.

Luckily retailers don’t have to foot the bill alone, as 8 out of 10 consumers are willing to pay extra for green delivery options.

46% would be open to paying £1 or more on every parcel ordered, representing a significant investment in green delivery from the 2.8 billion UK parcels shipped during the 2019/2020 fiscal year.

“Consumers want more sustainable delivery options, but they also want to see the full effects of their purchases on the environment,” says Rob van den Heuvel, CEO and co-founder at Sendcloud. “Even though governmental action can help to accelerate the greenification of deliveries, there is still a lot retailers and consumers can do themselves.

“Providing information about CO2 emissions and/or pre-ticking the most sustainable choice as the default encourages consumers to choose the most sustainable delivery option at checkout. Even something as simple as a sustainability icon or compensating emissions by planting trees can go a long way in persuading consumers to go green.

“Retailers can do their own part now by communicating clearly to their customers and promoting the impact of their efforts. Retailers need to consciously encourage consumers by giving them the choice to go green and choose clean.”

Linde publishes 2020 Sustainability Report

Posted on by David Priestman

The Aschaffenburg, Germany-based intralogistics specialist Linde Material Handling (Linde MH) has released its sustainability report for 2020. It takes stock of major social, ecological and economic aspects of the company’s activities and sets out specific targets for the future. Sustainability is firmly anchored in the company’s corporate strategy. Going forward, regular updates will continue to be published to document the progress being made.

“At Linde Material Handling, we are convinced that sustainability has become a crucial factor,” says Stefan Prokosch, Senior Vice President Brand Management at Linde MH. “In this regard, we focus both on our own sustainable business practices and on the products and solutions we manufacture.”

The intralogistics company aims to be a responsible and reliable partner to its customers in helping them achieve their own sustainability goals by means of innovative technologies. The sustainability report summarises the status quo as well as company objectives for the coming years and is based on the international standards for sustainability reporting set out by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). It is initially available for download as an English version PDF on Linde MH’s website.

Linde MH has been reporting on its own activities since 2014 and has presented a comprehensive set of guidelines within its current publication: The main section, covering corporate organisation and strategy, employer profile, employees, health, safety and environment, products and supply chains, and social responsibility, is followed by a detailed appendix with tables of relevant key performance indicators. There is a clear commitment to sustainable business practices, and this goal, together with customer satisfaction and profitable growth, forms a triad within the 2027 corporate strategy.

“For us, sustainability has become a measure of success because it secures our company’s future viability,” explains Hans-Georg Connor, Director Health, Safety & Environment at Linde MH. Specific goals have been defined to achieve this, including an EcoVadis rating of at least 75 points by 2027, a 5% reduction in reportable accidents annually, certification of all company sites according to ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 by 2024, and an average illness rate of no more than 3.3% for 2021.

In its report, Linde MH recognises its employees as a cornerstone of success. Offering career opportunities and advanced training programmes as well as an environment that fosters teamwork, the international company presents itself as an attractive employer who has maintained its strong commitment to training even during the two years of the coronavirus pandemic. In the year under review, the company employed 334 apprentices training in 14 occupations all over Europe and 30 students pursuing 10 for-credit dual-course college programmes in Germany.

A further chapter is devoted to Health, Safety and Environment (HSE). It lists measures and targets designed to maintain the health of employees and prevent accidents wherever possible. The same applies to the area of environmental protection: An initial milestone is to reduce energy-related greenhouse gases by 30% by 2027, with the CO2 footprint generated in production, sales and services in 2017 serving as the basis. Some progress toward this goal has already been achieved: Around 79% of the electricity purchased in 2020 came from renewable energy sources.

The 57-page report devotes ample consideration to the contribution that Linde MH is making to greater sustainability with its products and solutions. Prokosch explains why the focus is primarily on the products’ use phase: “As we know from our life cycle assessments, this is where the greatest leverage for climate protection is to be found. And with the new generation of Linde electric forklifts, we are creating another prerequisite for achieving CO2 neutrality in the long term.”

In general, the topic of energy plays an important role for Linde MH. “We want to be energy consultants for our customers and deliver the best possible solution for every application. To enable us to do this, we have the broadest range of energy options available,” Prokosch continues. “When it comes to recycling lithium-ion batteries, a viable solution already exists. The recycling of cells remains a challenge, however – the recycling rate is still low today.” Here, the company is working closely with battery manufacturers.

With its numerous safety solutions, Linde MH also offers a holistic concept for improving safety in intralogistics. In addition to sensor- and ultra-wideband-based assistance systems, this includes safety consulting that can be used to identify and mitigate safety-critical points in operations. Last, but not least, the high product quality of the company’s industrial trucks also contributes to the responsible use of resources.

Linde Material Handling’s principles relating to supplier behaviour are becoming increasingly important. They set out the clear expectation that human rights will be respected and international social standards complied with. In particular, these include the prohibition of child labour and forced labour in accordance with the requirements of the International Labor Organization (ILO), as well as the enforcement of statutory minimum, health and safety standards.

In order to achieve the greatest possible transparency with regard to the sustainability of Linde MH’s supply chain, an EcoVadis rating or a comparable assessment is to be available for 25% of top-spend strategic suppliers by 2022, 100% of strategic and high-risk suppliers by 2023 and 100% of direct suppliers by 2025. Moreover, minimum requirements for sustainability in the supply chain are to be defined and communicated by 2023, and from 2027 they will become mandatory for all suppliers.

Click here to download the report

Linde publishes 2020 Sustainability Report

Posted on by David Priestman

The Aschaffenburg, Germany-based intralogistics specialist Linde Material Handling (Linde MH) has released its sustainability report for 2020. It takes stock of major social, ecological and economic aspects of the company’s activities and sets out specific targets for the future. Sustainability is firmly anchored in the company’s corporate strategy. Going forward, regular updates will continue to be published to document the progress being made.

“At Linde Material Handling, we are convinced that sustainability has become a crucial factor,” says Stefan Prokosch, Senior Vice President Brand Management at Linde MH. “In this regard, we focus both on our own sustainable business practices and on the products and solutions we manufacture.”

The intralogistics company aims to be a responsible and reliable partner to its customers in helping them achieve their own sustainability goals by means of innovative technologies. The sustainability report summarises the status quo as well as company objectives for the coming years and is based on the international standards for sustainability reporting set out by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). It is initially available for download as an English version PDF on Linde MH’s website.

Linde MH has been reporting on its own activities since 2014 and has presented a comprehensive set of guidelines within its current publication: The main section, covering corporate organisation and strategy, employer profile, employees, health, safety and environment, products and supply chains, and social responsibility, is followed by a detailed appendix with tables of relevant key performance indicators. There is a clear commitment to sustainable business practices, and this goal, together with customer satisfaction and profitable growth, forms a triad within the 2027 corporate strategy.

“For us, sustainability has become a measure of success because it secures our company’s future viability,” explains Hans-Georg Connor, Director Health, Safety & Environment at Linde MH. Specific goals have been defined to achieve this, including an EcoVadis rating of at least 75 points by 2027, a 5% reduction in reportable accidents annually, certification of all company sites according to ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 by 2024, and an average illness rate of no more than 3.3% for 2021.

In its report, Linde MH recognises its employees as a cornerstone of success. Offering career opportunities and advanced training programmes as well as an environment that fosters teamwork, the international company presents itself as an attractive employer who has maintained its strong commitment to training even during the two years of the coronavirus pandemic. In the year under review, the company employed 334 apprentices training in 14 occupations all over Europe and 30 students pursuing 10 for-credit dual-course college programmes in Germany.

A further chapter is devoted to Health, Safety and Environment (HSE). It lists measures and targets designed to maintain the health of employees and prevent accidents wherever possible. The same applies to the area of environmental protection: An initial milestone is to reduce energy-related greenhouse gases by 30% by 2027, with the CO2 footprint generated in production, sales and services in 2017 serving as the basis. Some progress toward this goal has already been achieved: Around 79% of the electricity purchased in 2020 came from renewable energy sources.

The 57-page report devotes ample consideration to the contribution that Linde MH is making to greater sustainability with its products and solutions. Prokosch explains why the focus is primarily on the products’ use phase: “As we know from our life cycle assessments, this is where the greatest leverage for climate protection is to be found. And with the new generation of Linde electric forklifts, we are creating another prerequisite for achieving CO2 neutrality in the long term.”

In general, the topic of energy plays an important role for Linde MH. “We want to be energy consultants for our customers and deliver the best possible solution for every application. To enable us to do this, we have the broadest range of energy options available,” Prokosch continues. “When it comes to recycling lithium-ion batteries, a viable solution already exists. The recycling of cells remains a challenge, however – the recycling rate is still low today.” Here, the company is working closely with battery manufacturers.

With its numerous safety solutions, Linde MH also offers a holistic concept for improving safety in intralogistics. In addition to sensor- and ultra-wideband-based assistance systems, this includes safety consulting that can be used to identify and mitigate safety-critical points in operations. Last, but not least, the high product quality of the company’s industrial trucks also contributes to the responsible use of resources.

Linde Material Handling’s principles relating to supplier behaviour are becoming increasingly important. They set out the clear expectation that human rights will be respected and international social standards complied with. In particular, these include the prohibition of child labour and forced labour in accordance with the requirements of the International Labor Organization (ILO), as well as the enforcement of statutory minimum, health and safety standards.

In order to achieve the greatest possible transparency with regard to the sustainability of Linde MH’s supply chain, an EcoVadis rating or a comparable assessment is to be available for 25% of top-spend strategic suppliers by 2022, 100% of strategic and high-risk suppliers by 2023 and 100% of direct suppliers by 2025. Moreover, minimum requirements for sustainability in the supply chain are to be defined and communicated by 2023, and from 2027 they will become mandatory for all suppliers.

Click here to download the report

IVECO celebrates 600,000th Brescia-built truck

Posted on by Keith McKinley

IVECO is celebrating the 600,000th Eurocargo produced at its Brescia plant, an iconic production site for the brand that has played a key role in every generation of this vehicle, whose glorious past goes hand-in-hand with constant, forward-looking innovation. The Brescia plant has always been the heart of production operations for the Eurocargo, thanks to the commitment and passion that its workforce of around 1,600 employees dedicate to their jobs.

Says Brescia plant director Marco Colonna: “It is with great pride that we are celebrating the production of the 600,000th Eurocargo, whose fourth generation has been enjoying a continued success for many years. This milestone vehicle could not be powered by anything else but compressed natural gas (CNG), a tangible reaffirmation of IVECO’s constant commitment to sustainable mobility.

“Launched in 1991, the Bertone-designed Eurocargo was conceived to be one of the most innovative industrial vehicles on the market – as reflected in its remarkable sales success – with a modular cab platform allowing extensive scope for vehicle customisation without driving up costs. The significant history that lies behind us now guides us on a path of continuous improvement and innovation which, over the coming years, will see our vehicles evolve to become greener than ever.”

A pioneer in sustainability, IVECO is engaged every single day in actively reducing CO2 emissions with its alternative energy vehicles, which offer the ideal solution for the energy transition of the transport industry. Natural gas benefits both the environment and the economy, as it is the most effective solution available today for the needs of tomorrow. Natural gas-powered Eurocargo models are also extremely quiet, making them ideally suited to all urban missions.

The Brescia-based team works in synergy in every phase of production, from assembly of the chassis to cab bodywork, painting and installation of the transmission, to fitment of the interior trim, all the way to final inspection. The factory also produces special versions for military applications and firefighting. This flexibility is made possible by teamwork and by the ‘World Class Manufacturing’ integrated production system, which was introduced in 2007 with the goal of achieving zero defects, inefficiencies, waste and accidents. This gives the Eurocargo an edge, not only for its design, but also for its performance.

The origins of the plant date back to 1903, when Roberto Züst founded Fabbrica Automobili, a company that went on to become Officine Meccaniche (OM) in 1928 and was acquired by Fiat in 1968. After initially manufacturing cars (including race cars), OM moved to the agricultural sector and then on to industrial vehicles. In 1975, OM was among the “founding partners” of the new-born company IVECO.

In 1991, the factory was chosen as the site where production of the new Eurocargo would begin. The plant thus became the “home” of this model, and went on to play a key role in plotting the roadmap towards high-tech, sustainable vehicles. The plant itself is committed to safeguarding the environment and sustainability, and over the next few months, approximately 20,000 sq m of solar panels will be installed at the site, cutting CO2 emissions by 1,300 tonnes per year.

IVECO celebrates 600,000th Brescia-built truck

Posted on by David Priestman

IVECO is celebrating the 600,000th Eurocargo produced at its Brescia plant, an iconic production site for the brand that has played a key role in every generation of this vehicle, whose glorious past goes hand-in-hand with constant, forward-looking innovation. The Brescia plant has always been the heart of production operations for the Eurocargo, thanks to the commitment and passion that its workforce of around 1,600 employees dedicate to their jobs.

Says Brescia plant director Marco Colonna: “It is with great pride that we are celebrating the production of the 600,000th Eurocargo, whose fourth generation has been enjoying a continued success for many years. This milestone vehicle could not be powered by anything else but compressed natural gas (CNG), a tangible reaffirmation of IVECO’s constant commitment to sustainable mobility.

“Launched in 1991, the Bertone-designed Eurocargo was conceived to be one of the most innovative industrial vehicles on the market – as reflected in its remarkable sales success – with a modular cab platform allowing extensive scope for vehicle customisation without driving up costs. The significant history that lies behind us now guides us on a path of continuous improvement and innovation which, over the coming years, will see our vehicles evolve to become greener than ever.”

A pioneer in sustainability, IVECO is engaged every single day in actively reducing CO2 emissions with its alternative energy vehicles, which offer the ideal solution for the energy transition of the transport industry. Natural gas benefits both the environment and the economy, as it is the most effective solution available today for the needs of tomorrow. Natural gas-powered Eurocargo models are also extremely quiet, making them ideally suited to all urban missions.

The Brescia-based team works in synergy in every phase of production, from assembly of the chassis to cab bodywork, painting and installation of the transmission, to fitment of the interior trim, all the way to final inspection. The factory also produces special versions for military applications and firefighting. This flexibility is made possible by teamwork and by the ‘World Class Manufacturing’ integrated production system, which was introduced in 2007 with the goal of achieving zero defects, inefficiencies, waste and accidents. This gives the Eurocargo an edge, not only for its design, but also for its performance.

The origins of the plant date back to 1903, when Roberto Züst founded Fabbrica Automobili, a company that went on to become Officine Meccaniche (OM) in 1928 and was acquired by Fiat in 1968. After initially manufacturing cars (including race cars), OM moved to the agricultural sector and then on to industrial vehicles. In 1975, OM was among the “founding partners” of the new-born company IVECO.

In 1991, the factory was chosen as the site where production of the new Eurocargo would begin. The plant thus became the “home” of this model, and went on to play a key role in plotting the roadmap towards high-tech, sustainable vehicles. The plant itself is committed to safeguarding the environment and sustainability, and over the next few months, approximately 20,000 sq m of solar panels will be installed at the site, cutting CO2 emissions by 1,300 tonnes per year.

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