Baxter Freight and Nottingham Trent University have been awarded funding for a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) focused on sustainability within the logistics sector. This is the next leap forward for the Nottingham based freight forwarder who are focused on driving sustainable innovations within supply chains and decreasing their impact on the environment.
The logistics and transport sector contributes just over a third of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, making it the largest-emitting sector in numerous developed countries. (ISO.org) This sector is essential to the global economy, helping supply chains to keep moving, transporting essential (and non-essential) goods around the globe.
Supply chains are complex, in the UK alone there are around 61,303 road freight businesses, and all of them will need to evolve their operations to be more sustainable and future ready. This will not only impact hauliers and shippers globally, but this will affect any business moving goods in any volume around the UK and the rest of the world.
It is a necessary evolution of an industry that has traditionally been slow to move with the changes and is the greatest challenge the logistics sector has ever faced.
READ: Moving logistics towards a sustainable future
Bring in the Experts
The KTP in sustainability is part of an ongoing strategic partnership with Nottingham Trent University (NTU), Nottingham Business School (NBS) and Baxter Freight. This collaboration brings industry, academia, and emerging talent together to keep future focused and poised for change.
Climate change and the drive to net zero is a daunting task that has left many businesses globally grappling into an empty void, not knowing where to start or to seek advice. Baxter Freight was in this very same position and has slowly begun to build the partnerships necessary to create the change and the KTP is a big part of that.
The money awarded with this project will allow Baxter Freight to work with leading academics within the field of Supply chains, sustainability, organisational change and marketing as well as to recruit an associate to work within the organisation.
READ: Air cargo industry charts “journey into the future”
The Impact of Scope 3
From 2025 Scope 3 reporting, the indirect emissions in a company’s value chain that are typically responsible for 70-90% of an organisation’s carbon footprint (Carbon Trust), will become mandatory in Europe. Many larger businesses are already geared up for this change, others are taking the necessary steps, but a recent survey by Baxter Freight found that 47% of their customers aren’t ready.
Baxter Freight work very closely with hauliers and customers and have found that many of them are still unsure what Scope 1, 2 and 3 is and how it impacts them, let alone their operations.
Richard Jeggo and Tom Isler who are leading the KTP at Baxter Freight are working to support customers and suppliers and the KTP will be key to that.
“Collaborating with NTU/NBS is an opportunity for us to see how we can create clarity for our partners, whether they are suppliers or customers on this complex issue of Scope 1, 2 and 3, net zero and sustainability. If we can help even a handful of businesses to not only report on scope 3 but find more sustainable solutions because of it, then we will have already made a positive impact,” Tom Isler, Innovation & Sustainability Manager, said.
Over the coming months Baxter Freight will be growing their innovation team as they recruit for the new KTP associate.
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