Co-operative Food is considering expanding its rail freight operation to reduce the number of lorries on the road, after cutting carbon emissions by 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

The Co-operative’s logistics service says its use of rail has more than doubled in the past three years, and now more than a quarter of the Co-operative’s produce between Coventry and Scotland is transported via rail, in new Co-operative-branded containers.

A daily rail service is carrying more than 21 containers of produce every week between Daventry, close to the group’s national distribution centre at Coventry, and a rail freight terminal at Mossend, near to the Co-op's depot at Newhouse, on the outskirts of Glasgow.

This has led to a reduction of 800,000 road kilometres and an estimated saving of almost 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

The Co-operative started using rail freight in 2010 and hopes to extend its use of rail freight across Scotland and also to the South West of England.

“The rail freight initiative has been a big success for the Co-operative – taking increasing lorry loads off the road and radically reducing our carbon emissions," said Mark Leonard of the supply chain logistics service.

“We have worked really hard to ensure efficient and reliable deliveries to Scotland and, more importantly, we have now created a blueprint for potentially rolling out the rail freight service to some of our other depots across the country.

“Combating climate change is a key priority for the Co-operative, and logistics has a major role to play in reducing its carbon dioxide emissions. Rail freight is an area we are keen to expand to help us save significant amounts of carbon every year.”

The Co-operative rail freight service is operated by freight carriers W H Malcolm, which moves 10 containers and other grocery stock between the two sites every week.

The Co-op supermarket group in Switzerland is also involved in switching deliveries from road to rail. The Co-op took over RailCare, which has nine hubs and also works for other customers, in 2010.

The philosophy is to keep the collection and delivery by road at either end of the rail trunk haul as short as possible. Trains run to fixed schedules at up to 75 mph, carrying up to 26 containers each.

"We have shorter trains for the sake of speed," said Philip Wegmuller of RailCare.
One of RailCare's clients is the Heineken beer company, which uses uses an innovative new horizontal road-rail loading technique called ContainerMover 3000, designed by Innovatrain.

Information from The Grocer and International Rail Journal.