Britain’s roads will soon welcome their first sun-powered refrigerated trucks delivering meat, fish and dairy products across the country.
European shipping and logistics business DFDS has teamed up with British tech company Sunswap to install 10 of its zero-emission transport refrigeration units (TRUs) on its cold-chain vehicles.
Sunswap’s ‘Endurance’ technology combines battery and solar panels mounted on refrigerated trailers to keep temperature-controlled goods cold during transport.
The Surrey-based tech startup raised £17m in August this year from investors including the Business Growth Fund (BGF) and Shell, in a bid to replace the 55,000 diesel refrigeration units on Britain’s roads with batteries and solar power.
Its zero-emission system replaces traditional diesel-powered transport refrigeration units, offering a more sustainable solution for cold chain, while ensuring foodstuffs stay within critical temperature bands.
Depending on conditions, the trailer-top mounted solar panels can typically provide 65%-100% of the charge needed to operate the refrigeration unit, significantly reducing reliance on grid charging.
The technology also promises to reduce operating costs by 71% compared with running refrigeration on diesel.
“The Sunswap trailers provide a huge opportunity for us to reduce the carbon footprint of our operations and further strengthen our offering to customers,” said Matt O’Dell, DFDS UK&I’s cold chain MD.
“Our team has worked closely with Sunswap on this project and I’m very proud of all the hard work that has gone in to seeing the trailers arrive at our Peterborough depot ready for service.”
He said DFDS had “ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”.
“We aim to achieve a 75% reduction in CO2e emissions intensity by 2030 and to be net zero by 2050, and so introducing the Sunswap trailers to our UK fleet is an exciting part of that. I believe it will be a shift away from legacy diesel technology for cold storage transport.”
The move comes at a time when the wider logistics sector is trying to incorporate more sustainable processes as it faces increasing regulatory pressure and looming net zero deadlines.
The UK government has also pledged to phase out the sale of new, non-zero-emission heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) by 2040.
Last week, Simply Supply Chain held a ‘decarbonising logistics’ event for fmcg suppliers to learn more about how they can transition to a zero-emissions system.
Simply Supply Chain CEO Jonathan Kittow said third party logistics providers were often “waiting for suppliers to tell them what they are willing to invest in”.
“In general there is a lack of understanding of the options available – when and when not to use them, the full lifetime cost, and how to develop a plan that builds towards delivering diesel-free transport by 2040, which is only a mere three HGV lease contract cycles away,” said Kittow.
Read more: More than half of logistics businesses won’t meet net zero targets
DFDS and Sunswap’s solar panel solution is one of the few sustainable alternatives to diesel, along with natural gas, biodiesel and hydrogen.
The 10-lorry order follows a successful trial involving the two in 2022. It showed that with 10 Endurance solar and battery TRUs on fleet, the logistics giant could remove 895 tonnes of CO2 and save around 500,000 litres of diesel fuel over a 10-year unit lifetime compared with a traditional diesel truck.
The trials also showed that, on one of DFDS’s longer routes, 22 hours of cooling could be provided from one full battery charge, typically taking 80 minutes.
This amounted to a 13% saving in total cost of ownership, Sunswap said, making solar and battery electric power “a more sustainable and commercially viable option”.
The company has also trialled its technology with other customers including Tesco.
“This is a defining moment for Sunswap and sustainable transport refrigeration,” said Sunswap CEO Michael Lowe.
“After five years of engineering innovation and extensive trials, seeing the first Sunswap units enter full-time service with DFDS marks the beginning of diesel-free cold chain operations at scale. DFDS has shown true industry leadership by being first to adopt this technology.
“As we begin to fulfil subsequent orders from our production line in Leatherhead, we look forward to supporting major European retailers and logistics operators in decarbonising their cold-chain operations.”
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