Logistics

Climate-friendly transport

On track with nature: our fleet of trucks is driving greener and we are transporting more and more goods via rail.

Text: Janine Radlingmayr
Image: Nik Hunger, Basile Bornand
Date: 11.07.2023
Format: What we do

Our goods transport? As climate friendly as possible. As a green-minded company, we have been using rail transport for decades. Rail transport has a much better CO2 footprint than transport by road. Rail transport is prioritised for moving products from our Migros industrial sites and national distribution centres to the regional operations centres. Then only small journeys via truck are needed to supply the individual sales points.

We use clever combinations

We link rail to road in a smart way with unaccompanied combined transport (UCT). The goods are transported in swap containers or semi-trailers via rail for the longest part of the route, and only the first and last few kilometres utilise road transport with low-emission trucks. This serves primarily to supply sales points which are not connected to the rail network.

We drive clean

We are aiming to use 70 percent less CO2 in road transport by 2030. It's a big goal, but protecting the climate is important to us. This is why we have committed to climate goals that are compatible with the Paris Agreement on climate change. In order to achieve these ambitious goals, we cooperate with research institutes, support future-focused projects and continuously work on reducing the emissions of our truck fleet. «We are going to drastically reduce our CO2 emissions», says Rainer Deutschmann, Head of Corporate Security & Traffic Management at Migros.

Migros is continuously expanding its fleet of trucks to include biogas, electric and hydrogen drives to reduce CO2 emissions by 70 percent in comparison to 2019 by 2030. This equates to a reduction of around 15,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. Together with Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, we are running trucks which use fuels such as electricity, hydrogen or Swiss biogas while testing energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

We think of alternatives

In order to make road transport as environmentally friendly as possible, our ten regional cooperatives have their own fleets of low-emission vehicles – most of the 500 trucks comply with the latest EURO-6 emissions standard, as we want to continuously reduce our CO2 emissions. What does this require? It’s simple: smart scheduling, a fuel-saving driving style and the use of alternative drive technologies and fuels such as electricity, hydrogen, biogas and biodiesel. However, this doesn’t just apply to our vehicles – we also want to promote our vision among external transport partners.

We are proud

We have developed a digital tool together with Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. It allows us to perform detailed analyses of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of our trucks and provides findings on which alternative drive technology is most suitable for each part of the journey.

These transport milestones make a difference!

Our Migros Eastern Switzerland cooperative has been transporting all non-food products via rail since 2018. Goods from our Neuendorf distribution centre are now being transported to the Migros Eastern Switzerland operations centre via rail instead of truck.

We combine rail and road in a clever way. For example, when we deliver frozen products to stores in Eastern Switzerland. The goods are sent on their way directly from the platform of the frozen storage warehouse and are only loaded onto trucks at the Gossau terminal. Migros Eastern Switzerland has been supplying its new store in the Engadine using combined transport every day since 2021. In comparison to road transport over the Julier Pass by diesel truck alone, this saves around 204 tonnes or 87 percent of CO2 per year.

Because we can achieve more together, we support our suppliers in switching to transport via rail. As an example, over 7,000 pallets of tea since 2019 and over 3,000 pallets of cosmetics since 2021 have reached us from Northern Germany via train instead of truck, as would have been the case in the past.

Beverages from Italy have also been transported via rail from Chiasso since 2018. This takes a little longer but it’s great for the environment. Transport via rail is particularly ideal for heavy and bulky products such as drinks or toilet paper, so we continued expanding beverage deliveries via rail in 2021.

We use the Mediterranean ports of Genua and La Spezia. This shortens transport routes and reduces emissions. We bundle all containers arriving through these ports and transport them to distribution centres in Switzerland via rail.

Certain goods travel 12,000 kilometres to us in Switzerland from the Far East using the Trans-Siberian Railway. The journey takes 21 days. This is twice as fast as a container ship and half as costly as transport by air.