Digital logistics pilot to catapult the decarbonisation of road haulage

Business consultancy Digital Catapult has teamed up with the company behind Spar supermarket stores on a pilot project it claims could have a significant impact on decarbonising the UK’s transport logistics sector.

A pilot scheme delivered by Digital Catapult in partnership with AF Blakemore & Son, the family-run owner of Spar supermarkets, explored how using a shared digital infrastructure system could establish more intelligent vehicle slot filling, routing, and tracking.

UK freight accounts for 31% of all UK transport CO2 emissions, and statistics from the Department for Transport show that 30% of trucks on UK roads are running with empty loads.

The sector is under pressure to decarbonise without compromising on efficiency, and the pilot project set out to prove that technology could be harnessed to help achieve this.

The project, Logistics Living Lab, was trialled in a real-world environment, and combined distributed ledger technology (DLT), the internet of things and an algorithm developed by project partner Fuuse, to optimise route planning and truck use.

Digital Catapult claimed that it was able to match vehicle transport capacity with shipment needs across multiple UK organisations, which saw a 37% decrease in overall transport costs and a 9% improvement in vehicle fill rate for AF Blakemore & Son.

Scaling of the solution would allow competing logistics providers to safely share information on available truck space across their collective fleets, without the need for a single party to have full control or visibility of the entire system, he non-profit, UK innovation agency claimed,

It added that that UK logistics play a critical role in driving economic growth, contributing £163 billion to the economy, and serving as a vital link between the UK and the global market.

Tim Lawrence, director of the Digital Supply Chain Hub at Digital Catapult said: “The solutions built through this collaboration deliver a triple benefit to the UK logistics sector by empowering the organisations that make up our complex supply chains, to become more efficient, reduce costs to improve their bottom line and make a lasting environmental difference.”

The project’s finding have been published in a report, accessible through the Digital Supply Chain Hub.

Digital Catapult and its partners plan to scale the project to further decarbonise the UK logistics sector.

The agency also launched two further supply chain accelerators designed to fund tracking and sustainability efforts in September this year.