OXFORD has become DPD’s first city to be serviced by electric vehicles only as the company moves to fulfil a pledge to deliver ‘green’ to 25 major UK towns and cities, covering 25% of the UK population by 2025. Nine further UK ‘green cities’ are to be confirmed this year.
All Oxford parcel deliveries will be made from DPD’s new, state-of-the-art Bicester eco-depot. The 60,000 square foot hub at Symmetry Park is DPD’s first ‘net zero carbon in construction’ building, as regulated by the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC). The depot has a fleet of 40 electric vehicles, and they will deliver more than 15,000 parcels a week in Oxford.
DPD claims its ‘Vision 25’ initiative will deliver 42,000 tonnes of CO2 savings for the UK, or the equivalent of planting 170,000 trees by the end of 2025. The company is investing £111 million in electric vehicles. in June, DPD agreed a deal with vehicle manufacturer MAXUS for 750 e DELIVER electric vans, which will take the firm’s total UK EV fleet to over 1,700 EVs on the road by the end of the year.
DPD’s Vision 25
DPD’s whole approach to sustainability is about joining up the dots beyond just buying electric vehicles.
Vision 25 was announced in October 2020 and is part of a Europe-wide drive by DPD group involving 225 urban areas in 20 countries. In the UK, the other 24 towns and cities included in the initiative will be; Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton and Hove, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Derby, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Kingston-upon-Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton and Stoke-on-Trent.
DPD’s Head of CSR, Olly Craughan, said this was a landmark day for for DPD.
“To be able to say we can now deliver to a city the size of Oxford, using only electric vehicles, is a huge leap forward not only us, but for the sector as a whole. And we are on track to repeat this in nine more cities this year. We’ve been working with electric vehicles for the past three years and we have learned a lot in that time. As well as investing in the vehicles themselves, we’ve created a whole new smart delivery system around them, including the charging infrastructure.
“Bicester is the greenest and most sustainable facility in our UK network and it is right that we start the roll-out of our 25 green cities here, at a time when Oxford itself is taking a huge step with the Zero Emission Zone pilot due to be launched later this year. Our whole approach to sustainability is about joining up the dots beyond just buying electric vehicles. And that means working with others on initiatives like city centre emissions schemes and measuring air quality. With this approach, we will be helping reduce emissions one city centre at a time, starting with Oxford.”
See: Why SME Van Fleets Should Go EV
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