Brochure on sustainability - Klasmann Deilmann

Although there is an internal requirement to always take into account
environmental concerns when awarding transport contracts, there are
limits to this. Customer orders often involve very narrow delivery
windows – next-day delivery in many cases – and these can only be
met using road transport.
Nevertheless, Klasmann-Deilmann strives to be as environmentally
friendly as possible in its logistical services. For example, the
establishment of the Cavaillon intermediate storage facility in France,
which is served only by block trains, enabled a volume of goods
equivalent to 1,200 lorry-loads to be rerouted to rail in 2010. Combined
‘lorry-train-lorry’ transport has proven effective for orders to Italy.
The principle generally followed is ‘water before rail before road’.
Unfortunately, however, rail transport is often uneconomic compared
with road haulage and also frequently leads to high costs when goods
are transferred to water vessels. There is also the virtually insoluble
problem of rail gauge incompatibility between, for example, Eastern
and Western Europe. Nevertheless, Klasmann-Deilmann endeavours to
ensure a large proportion of its freight consignments are moved by rail.
In-house evaluation of freight carriers includes consideration of
environmental-impact parameters. These relate to aspects such as
transport technology and compliance with the very latest exhaust
emissions standards.
Klasmann-Deilmann’s logistics operations are therefore at the
partially confl icting interface between the two pillars of economy and
ecology. There is no ideal happy medium as yet; for the time being,
the optimum solution must be found on a case-by-case basis.
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