DPD has confirmed that all its parcel deliveries in Oxford will be made with only electric vehicles from now on – making it the company’s first “all-electric city”. Another 9 UK cities are to be confirmed this year.
DPD’s pledge is to deliver ‘green' to 25 major UK towns and cities, covering 25% of the UK population by 2025. In order to achieve this goal, the company has made a £111m investment in electric vehicles. It is estimated the EVs will bring about 42,000 tonnes of CO2 savings for the UK by 2025 – the equivalent of planting 170,000 trees.
According to the parcel delivery giant, all of its Oxford deliveries will be made from the company’s new, state-of-the-art Bicester eco-depot. The 60,000 sq ft hub at Symmetry Park will be home to a fleet of 40 electric vehicles capable of delivering over 15,000 parcels a week right across the city. Once fully operational, the depot could create up to 250 new jobs.
Commenting on the announcement, DPD’s Head of CSR, Olly Craughan, said:
“This is a landmark day for us. 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.”
Photo credit: DPD