The UK’s leading food and consumer goods companies today announced that an initiative to reduce the environmental impact of transporting food and groceries has removed the equivalent of 53 million journey miles from UK roads.

Over the course of the last year, many household brands have been working together through IGD’s Efficient Consumer Response (ECR UK) initiative on the Sustainable Distribution project.

ECR UK today announced that through measures such as sharing vehicles and more efficient warehousing the project has surpassed its targeted saving of 48 million miles. The 53 million road miles saved is equivalent to removing 900 lorries from Britain’s roads or conserving 26 million litres of diesel fuel per year.

IGD President and Nestlé UK Chief Executive Alastair Sykes says: “These results are a significant achievement for the food industry and demonstrate the determination that exists among manufacturers and retailers to minimise our environmental impact.

“There will always be a need to transport food and grocery items from producers to shoppers, but there is certainly scope to do this more efficiently. This initiative has helped us achieve significant environmental and financial benefits. We are confident it will set the standard for future projects to improve the sustainability of our industry.”

In order to drive wider industry participation in the scheme, IGD will shortly be unveiling a guide explaining how smaller and larger businesses alike can make similar savings.

The savings have been generated through a mix of internal projects, and external partnerships between retailers and suppliers. The outputs of the initiative will be shared widely within the industry to encourage improvements from companies of all sizes.

Participating companies currently include the UK’s largest food and grocery retailers, manufacturers and wholesalers listed below.

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Notes to Editors:

Participating Companies

Asda Stores Ltd, Bakkavor Ltd, Booker Group plc, Boots, Brakes, Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd, Colgate Palmolive (UK) Ltd, Compass Group plc, Coors, Co-operative Group Ltd, Dairy Crest Group plc, Gerber Juice Company Ltd, H.J. Heinz Co Ltd, Iceland Foods Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Ltd, Kellogg Marketing & Sales Co, Kimberly-Clark Ltd, Kraft Foods Ltd, L’Oreal Golden Ltd, Marks & Spencer plc, Mars (UK), Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc, Muller Dairy (UK) Ltd, Musgrave Retail Partners GB, Nestle UK Ltd, Northern Foods plc, Palmer & Harvey McLane Ltd, Pepsico UK & Ireland Ltd, Premier Foods Group Ltd, Procter & Gamble UK, Robert Wiseman & Sons Ltd, Sainsbury’s, Somerfield Stores Ltd, Tesco Stores Ltd, Unilever UK, United Biscuits, Waitrose Ltd.

Company Examples

Asda & Unilever

Unilever has worked with a variety of its customers to explore the potential of transport collaboration. A specific example is the work it has done with Asda to share transport between Unilever Doncaster Distribution Centre and Asda Washington Distribution Centre. Health & Beauty brands such as Dove, Lynx and Sure were previously delivered directly by Unilever to Asda. Now, returning Asda vehicles pass through Doncaster and pick up the products for delivery into Washington. This has helped to take 50,000 miles off the road.

Kimberly-Clark and Kellogg

Kimberly-Clark and Kellogg started on small order deliveries in the South of England in 2006. They are now extending their partnership to the North of England and Scotland this autumn. The collaboration between the two companies is supported by TDG who provide the vehicles which both companies need for their bulky products (Kellogg cereals and snacks, Kimberly-Clark’s Andrex, Huggies, Kleenex and Fiesta brands).

The partnership means that trucks can be filled to maximum capacity, reducing lorry loads to smaller retailers and taking empty lorries off the road. This in turn reduces distribution costs, increases delivery frequency whilst maintaining high utilisation of vehicles, and improves on-shelf availability. But the real win is the environmental benefits with reduced carbon emissions equivalent to 270,000 road miles.

Nestlé & United Biscuits

Nestlé UK delivers over 15 loads each day from its factories in the north of England to its Distribution Centre in the Midlands. Only 80% of these loads could be tied to a return journey so 2 or 3 trucks each day would return empty.

Through ECR UK, Nestlé was able to identify that United Biscuits was running empty trucks from close to Nestlé’s factories in the North to the Midlands. Nestlé and United Biscuits were therefore able to work together to create roundtrips which are more efficient and avoid empty truck movements.

United Biscuits trucks now collect a load of Nestlé products each day from Nestlé’s factories in York and Halifax and deliver to the Midlands. The two companies demonstrated that through collaboration it is possible to generate a significant environmental and cost saving.

Sainsbury’s & Organix

This initiative has resulted in a reduction of 200,000 miles per annum across both transport fleets by introducing better vehicle utilisation between baby food supplier Organix’s factory and a nearby Sainsbury’s depot.

Empty Sainsbury’s vehicles from the retailer’s nearby Basingstoke depot collect Organix products, and return fully laden more often, reducing empty vehicles on the road.

Tesco’s Wine Train

Tesco brings its wine from around the world using its importer JF Hillebrand. They have embarked on a collaborative effort to take wine off the road and onto rail. The two companies have initiated a daily block train, affectionately dubbed “The Wine Train”. This runs between Tilbury docks and Tesco’s distribution centre in Daventry. This activity has successfully removed 740,000 miles from the busy M25 and M1 motorways. The next phase of the project will involve using the train on its return trip to transport product from Tesco’s East Midlands distribution sites to its South Eastern distribution sites

About IGD

IGD is an international food and grocery expert providing market intelligence, supply chain best practice and consumer insight to the food and grocery industry worldwide. It has over 650 member companies worldwide including farmers, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and catering companies. For more information, visit www.igd.com

About Alastair Sykes

Alastair Sykes is Chairman and Chief Executive of Nestlé UK Ltd, a role he has held since 2001. He was previously Managing Director of Nestlé Confectionery and has held senior positions at Gillette, McCormick Foods and Dalgety PLC. Alastair is President of IGD for 2007/8 and he is also a member of the Executive Committee of the FDF (Food and Drink Federation).

About ECR UK

ECR UK (Efficient Consumer Response) is an initiative led by the directors of leading retailers and manufacturers and managed by IGD, focused on driving collaboration between retailers and suppliers for the ultimate benefit of consumers. Over the past 10 years it has provided a framework for a variety of projects with a key benefit being the use of a common language between retailers and manufacturers.

The ECR UK Executive board is co-chaired by Diane Carter from Sainsbury’s and Chris Tyas from Nestlé and the Sustainable Distribution initiative is one of the key projects for the ECR UK initiative. For more information, visit www.igd.com/ecr.

For further information, please contact:

Paul Griffin, Senior Press Officer, IGD. T: +44 (0)1923 851990 M: +44 (0)7834 652991 E: paul.griffin@igd.com