Pharmaceutical deliveries powered by biofuel
20.9.2019
Oriola is continuously working with its transportation partners to decrease emissions caused by our deliveries of pharmaceuticals and health and wellbeing products. Starting from June, our deliveries at Helsinki metropolitan area in Finland have run partly on biofuels.
Oriola takes care of roughly half of pharmaceutical deliveries in Finland and Sweden, and we deliver pharmaceutical and health and wellbeing products daily to 2,500 customers in total in our operating countries. That makes transportation the biggest source of indirect emissions at Oriola.
“Our goal to decrease transportation emissions is important also to our pharmaceutical company customers, which was clear in our sustainability stakeholder analysis last year. Our distribution network is operated by our transportation partners, and we expect them to commit to reduce their CO2 emissions and to provide us emissions data on a regular basis,” says Katja Tolkki, Head of Sustainability at Oriola.
One example of initiatives to cut emissions is taking biofuels in use. Recently, our transportation partner PostNord introduced new biofuel vehicles for Oriola’s deliveries in Helsinki metropolitan area in Finland. New vehicles consist of four delivery vans using biodiesel, two trucks using domestic biogas and two trucks using natural gas.
“Reducing transportation emissions is an important target for us. For example, a biogas vehicle causes roughly a quarter of emissions compared to diesel. We will continue to investigate opportunities to expand the use of biofuels. The most interesting and efficient options are such renewable biofuels that can be used in regular diesel motors without investments to new vehicles,” says CEO Johanna Starck from PostNord.
Other key measures to decrease transportation emissions are e.g. optimised route planning and a high rate of capacity usage. Additionally, there are many other factors that influence transportation emissions, starting from energy efficient driving and freight weight.
