Geographic spread
Transport, both internal and external, is a large part of Benders’ operations and a significant part of our environmental impact. The geographic spread of our production facilities and depots is considered to be a prime factor in ecofriendly production. Which depot is to supply anything is determined by the shortest transport route to the customer. For us, it is important that environment, efficiency and costs go hand in hand.
Given the environmental challenges faced by the transport industry, we want to contribute optimally and make strategic, environmentally aware decisions as regards, amongst other things, how we carry freight. Our supplier collaborations have resulted in all inward deliveries of raw materials (e.g. cement and sand) always being from the geographically closest place (provided that said materials maintain the requested quality).
Swedish manufacture
From a geographic perspective, product ranges also affect transport. Benders invests in having coordinated central warehouses carrying entire product ranges at strategic points close to railways. Three of our major production facilities have their own branch lines and thus have favourable conditions for selecting ecofriendly transport.
The aim is that long transport runs are to use ecofriendly trains and short runs to customers are to be by lorry. Currently, around 44% of our internal transport is by train.
Train investment
Since 2010, Benders has had its own trainload service, Tågab. This runs between the Bålsta production facility and Kongsvinger, the location of a central warehouse for the Norwegian market. Especially for transport between our Swedish facilities, Green Cargo’s wagon load system is an important complement for increased flexibility and stable capacity. Wagon load is a solution that suits operations that need both regular and one-off goods transport.
In recent years, the collaboration between Benders and Green Cargo has intensified and we have transferred more goods from road to rail. In 2020, Green Cargo ran around 2,700 wagons for us in Sweden. This represented, in total, approximately 44.5 million tonne-kilometres. The collaboration has reduced negative environmental impact by around 2,020 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year (compared with the same volume of transport by lorry). The same figure for our own trainload system is a reduction of about 2,320 tonnes of CO2. Compared to transporting the products by lorry, our train transport gives a total reduction of approximately 4,350 tonnes. This equates to around 5,760 lorries.
Ship investment
So that products and production inputs can be received directly from ships, our Uddevalla facility has a quay. Per unit of load, a ship uses far less energy than a lorry. Thus, bearing in mind the low carbon dioxide emissions per transported unit, this is a good alternative.
