Jaguar Land Rover cuts supply chain emissions

Jaguar Land Rover is probably not the first company that springs to mind when one is asked to think of green businesses.

The firm's two main brands are better known for their size and luxury than their green credentials. But internally the firm has a target to reduce CO2 emissions by a quarter over the next five years.

Jaguar Land Rover has removed more than 13,000 tonnes of emissions from its supply and delivery chain's annual carbon footprint through efficency measures over the past five years – a reduction of about 6.5 per cent.

The firm's supply and delivery chain is a huge operation, clocking up some four million road miles a year, on top of a million nautical miles and 54,000 rail miles, all to deliver some 250,000 vehicles annually.

The first step in cutting down waste was gaining control of the inbound supply chain, according to David Dyke, director of material planning and logistics at Jaguar Land Rover.

"All of our 380 suppliers used to bring in materials individually in their own lorries and deliver to our decks," he said. "In 2003 we launched an integrated EU supply chain, where we go to them rather than them coming to us."

This allowed the firm to plan its vehicle use and reduce road miles by 52 per cent, winning a Department for Transport best practice award in the process.

More recently, an initiative to work with Ford and prevent the movement of empty pallets by sharing operations saved more than 1,000 tonnes of CO2 and the decommissioning of an offsite distribution centre saved 600 more.

"As we changed our operations, we got leaner material flows and had better control over them, resulting in less need to hold materials onsite," said Dyke.

In 2008, a scheme to optimise vehicle loading between two sites in Halewood and Castle Bromwich saved 54 tonnes of CO2, while a move to logistics supplier DHL and an agreed upgrade of 90 of DHL's vehicles from Euro 3 to Euro 5 standards meant an annual reduction of almost 2,000 tonnes of CO2.

DHL have also installed telematic onboard driver monitoring systems, known as Vemis, which will improve fuel consumption and reduce carbon emissions.

Looking ahead, the logistics supplier aims to deliver further CO2 reductions through reducing the average speed of vehicles by 3mph to 53mph, introducing driver training courses and looking at alternative fuels for vehicles.

The company wanted to move towards more rail distribution of vehicles on its outbound supply chain.

Finished vehicles are now dispatched from Halewood and Castle Bromwich by rail, saving about 777,000 road miles and more than 1,000 tonnes of CO2.

And a scheme by Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics, which delivers 70,000 vehicles a year via ships to the US, has seen sulphur dioxide reduced by 43 per cent and CO2 emissions reduced by 20.5 per cent through optimising speed and using different fuels.

WWL is also developing an ultra-low-emission vehicle known as "Orcelle", which will harness solar, wind and wave power to deliver 10,000 cars per crossing.

And it aims to deliver a further four per cent CO2 reduction in 2009, chiefly through the introduction of SMHI weather routing systems which adjust routes to take advantage of currents, tides and wind.

Going forwards, Dyke said the firm wants to improve the regularity of its benchmarking so it can identify further opportunities for savings.

"We're putting in place a system to record the overall carbon footprint of the supply chain on an ongoing basis," he said. "This will allow us to monitor emissions more accurately and more regularly."