Supermarket chain Albert Heijn recently received the Golden RAI Wheel 2022 during the annual RAI Mobility Dinner. The prize was presented by Jan Hendrik Dronkers, Secretary General of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. Albert Heijn receives the prize for its contribution to making transport and logistics in the Netherlands more sustainable.
The Netherlands and Europe have great ambitions to reduce CO2030 emissions by 2 percent by 55 compared to 1990 levels. The transport sector must also make an important contribution to this. In the Netherlands, the sector accounts for more than 10 percent of annual CO2 emissions. From 2025, dozens of Dutch cities will therefore gradually switch to zero-emission city logistics. This has a major impact on the supply of supermarkets and the delivery to consumers. In the run-up to this transition, Albert Heijn is one of the frontrunners in making its complete logistics processes more sustainable through the use of, among other things, cleaner and more economical light and heavy commercial vehicles.
Leader in making transport and logistics more sustainable
Every day, more than a thousand vehicles from more than twenty transport companies drive for Albert Heijn to supply almost 900 stores in the Netherlands with all products from six distribution centers. Albert Heijn signed the Green Deal City Logistics in 2014 to supply a large number of cities emission-free from 2025. To this end, Albert Heijn and its logistics partners have started various pilots throughout the country in recent years aimed at testing zero-emission technologies and pilots for charging technology. As a result, Albert Heijn is currently not only using fully battery-electric powered trucks, but is also testing a diverse fleet of alternative clean and economical technologies such as (bio-)LNG and plug-in hybrid trucks. In addition, dozens of smaller delivery vehicles have now been converted from diesel to electric and we are constantly working on optimizing distribution and delivery journeys. Thanks to this optimization, both distribution to the supermarket and delivery directly to customers take place with less and less CO2 emissions.
Committee of Recommendation
The Committee of Recommendation appreciates Albert Heijn's enormous commitment to the environment to make it as sustainable as possible and to achieve a circular economy. Albert Heijn is an inspiring example for other companies that work hard to make logistics sustainable in the Netherlands possible. All these aspects made the Committee of Recommendation decide to appoint the central management of Royal RAI Association advise to award 'The Golden RAI Wheel 2022' to Albert Heijn.
The Golden RAI Wheel
The Golden RAI Wheel was established in 2003 to honor and encourage individuals or institutions that distinguish themselves at national or international level in the field of traffic and transport or means of transport in the broadest sense. Previous celebrities and institutions that received the prize include road stewards from Rijkswaterstaat, former Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management Melanie Schultz van Haegen, fast charging company Fastned., astronaut Wubbo Ockels, Pieter van Vollenhoven, the ANWB, the Advanced Automotive Design department. from TU Delft, SWOV and KiM.
