Volvo Trucks, IKEA Industry and the Raben Group signed a collaboration agreement on zero-emission heavy transport. The agreement was inked last week and will introduce heavy electric Volvo trucks for internal transport flows at two of IKEA’s factories in Zbąszynek, in Poland, which will be operated by the Raben Group.
Lessons from the pilot will be used for the electrification of transport operations at scale in a larger transport network.
The decision is in line with IKEA’s strategic climate goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for product transport by 70 per cent per shipment. For this, the electrification of heavy-duty vehicles is critical.
“We are happy to announce this collaboration which aims to accelerate our shift to more sustainable road transport,” said Małgorzata Dobies-Turulska, Managing Director of IKEA Industry Zbąszynek. “This project enables us to explore and learn about the challenges and opportunities in the deployment of electric transport operations at scale and its interdependencies in a larger transport network.”
“We are excited to work together with IKEA and the Raben Group towards more sustainable truck transport,” added Robert Grozdanovski, Senior Vice President for Central and East Europe at Volvo Trucks. “IKEA and Raben both have ambitious climate goals just like Volvo. This project will give us valuable insights and constitutes a good basis for an extended collaboration in the future.”
The trucks will be charged at the IKEA Industry production facilities using renewable electricity from an external source. The first electric truck will begin operation during autumn and the plan is to expand the fleet based on the learnings from the pilot.
Volvo Trucks started serial production of electric trucks in 2019, as one of the very first truck brands worldwide to do so. Today the company has six electric truck models in series produced globally, the broadest electric truck lineup in the industry. The company’s target is that half of its total truck sales will be electric by 2030.
“For the Raben Group, this project is the first step in the process of decarbonising our own fleet driving towards the ambitious CO2 reduction plans recently scientifically approved by Science Based Targets (SBTi) experts,” said Piotr Banasiak, Managing Director at Raben Transport. “This is also an important project for the full truckload transportation process. We are one of the first logistics companies in Europe to undertake the ambitious challenge of running an electric truck working with a 24-ton trailer.”
