IKEA Belgium will use seven electric trucks for the delivery of large orders at customers’ homes. The investment of 2 million euros should help to get 80 percent of those home deliveries emissions -free this year. That turned out on Wednesday at the presentation of such an electric truck on the Ikea store in Zaventem.
The Belgian department of the Swedish home store chain has had electric vans for some time, which brings orders from the eight stores to customers. So now seven electric trucks are being added. “They will bring heavier orders, such as kitchens and large wardrobe combinations, from IKEA distribution centers to people’s homes,” said project manager John Neven.
The trucks are being built at Volvo Trucks in Ghent. They have a driving range of 350 to 440 kilometers, depending on the weather conditions and how heavily they are loaded, it sounded at VPD, the Belgian transport partner of IKEA.
With the electric fleet – a total of a hundred vehicles – IKEA will be able to deliver 80 percent of home deliveries -free emissions to Belgium by the end of this year. The ambition is to be 100 percent at the latest in 2027. In the meantime, solutions are also being considered to make internal transports (with even larger trucks) more sustainable. And extra charging stations will be built on the parking spaces of the shops.
IKEA Belgium delivers around 32,000 orders – or almost 400,000 a year – at home every month.
The home store chain has eight stores in Belgium: in Arlon, Anderlecht, Bergen, Ghent, Hasselt, Liège, Wilrijk and Zaventem. IKEA Belgium has more than 4,400 employees.