Business cases

The challenge

Following the closure of a combined rail service between northern France and Lombardy, a sugar co-operative needed to find an alternative logistics solution quickly.

Located in the Hauts-de-France and Seine-et-Marne regions, the cooperative transports more than 80 containers of bulk sugar to Lombardy each week for two European leaders in the industrial consumer food sector.
In short, order fulfilment and turnover were at risk, and a 100% road solution was unrealistic from a financial and environmental perspective.

  • REGAINING TRANSPORT CONTROL, AUTONOMY AND RELIABILITY

The existing transport plan used a combination of rail and road. Over the years, however, this combined solution became prohibitively expensive due to the scarcity of long-haul road capacity, the need to share a combined transport solution among multiple customers, and the difficulty of securing the supply chain.

  • RETHINKING THE TRANSPORT PLAN BY LIMITING ITS CARBON FOOTPRINT

The major food brands in the European market are committed to actively participating in environmental initiatives and are asking their suppliers to improve their production and logistics parameters in order to significantly reduce their carbon emissions, a challenge that the sugar cooperative had to take up immediately.

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