The advance towards an increasingly digital consumption is unstoppable. Electronic commerce adds vehicles and more delivery vehicles to the streets and puts on the table the debate on how to reach a more sustainable model at an environmental, social and economic level. The future of last mile logistics is a challenge for cities, but also for rural environments.
The industry is making improvements in efficiency, speed, security, and sustainability, but significant challenges still lie ahead. This was the unanimous opinion of the participants in the round table on the future of the last mile organized by La Vanguardia and the Consorci de la Zona Franca and held a few days before Barcelona hosts a new edition of SIL, the leading logistics fair , transport, intralogistics and supply chain.
The SIL, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary, will take place between the 7th and 9th of this month and will have the participation of 650 companies, 40% of them international, which will present more than 150 world-exclusive novelties. Within the framework of the fair, five major international congresses will be held.
Chaired by Pere Navarro, special State delegate to the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona, and Pere Guardiola, commercial and expansion general director of Grupo Godó, the panel of experts included the participation of Jordi Espín, general secretary of TRANSPRIME Spanish Shippers' Council; Cristian Oller, Vice President and Country Manager of Prologis Spain; Pere Roca, CEO and co-founder of Geever; Ferran Lumbierres, Head of Engineering and Co-Founder of AldoraTech; Patrick Lokkegaard, co-founder of ecoDeliver; and Blanca Sorigué, general director of the Consorci.
Technology, innovation, cooperation and a greater consideration of public administrations are some of the levers for the future of logistics, which was claimed in this session of Dialogues in La Vanguardia as a dynamic sector of the economy, which generates quality and lasting employment , that does not relocate and that is prepared for the dizzying changes that are coming. A sector, Navarro added, that "has an innate capacity, much more than other activities, to find solutions and do it quickly, and also incorporates the requirement of sustainability as standard".
Investment in technology is essential to face the future with guarantees, said Sorigué. "Companies must bet decisively on technology, with important items in their annual budgets," he claimed. But not only companies must make this commitment. Sorigué also advocated investment by the administrations, as the Consorci de la Zona Franca is doing with its 4.0 logistics incubator, which already has more than 20 startups. The rest of the participants seconded this idea. "Companies that have a vocation for the future cannot stop investing in technology," said Roca, while the head of Prologis in Spain advanced that his company also has a vertical, Prologis Ventures, which invests in startups, as well as a warehouse of tests in which they test the new technologies that are emerging.
In a scenario like the current one, with an energy and climate crisis, and a lack of drivers in the sector, "the only option is to innovate," stressed Espín, a statement seconded especially by Sorigué, who deemed it absolutely necessary to create innovation ecosystems .
Innovation and new technologies, from predictive systems to artificial intelligence, which facilitate information and communication to provide a more efficient service, including autonomous vehicles, are favoring the emergence of new business models, such as the cases from Geever, ecoDeliver and AldoraTech.
Geever has created a capillary network of micro-warehouses located mostly in underground car parks and no more than 750 meters from any customer in Barcelona. With this model, Roca explained, the merchandise enters the city during off-peak hours, preferably at night and in electric vehicles and is stored in these microhubs. The next day, staff from the same neighborhood distribute what we could describe as more than the last mile of “half a mile”, with totally zero emission vehicles. For its part, the firm ecoDeliver has already been dubbed the BlaBlaCar of parcels because it bases its proposal on the collaborative economy. Anyone who is going to travel between cities, summed up Lokkegaard, can be an 'ecoDriver', taking advantage of the free space in his car, transporting packages with him, covering the expenses of the trip and avoiding that a truck has to make the trip, saving CO2 emissions . As for AldoraTech, it provides solutions, not from conventional formulas, but from aeronautics. “We introduced drones, unmanned aerial vehicles and, thinking from the beginning about sustainability, propelled electrically and with green hydrogen”, Lumbierres highlighted.
Roca predicted that we will probably be able to see autonomous wheeled vehicles in cities that deliver to final consumers from micro-warehouses, but Lumbierres was convinced that drones are the future, since these vehicles do not use the terrestrial infrastructure, which is heavily overloaded. Delivery drones, which are already a reality in Australia, Ireland and some African countries, can deliver merchandise without actually landing. The AldoraTech representative advanced that by 2024 the creation of airways is planned over the cities where the drones will circulate with a system of air traffic controllers. Drones are also a solution to reach rural areas and, in this sense, the Sabadell company is already working with Correos.
The last mile is not only the distribution of purchases by individuals on the Internet; It is also, for example, the distribution to the Horeca channel (hotels and restaurants) and the classic distribution of merchandise to stores, recalled Espín. But it is electronic commerce, after its explosion during the pandemic, is the one that is launching the most vehicles onto the streets of cities, already saturated. Hence, the speakers called for a "less reactive and more proactive" urbanism, in the words of Oller, which allows new uses to be given to infrastructures and facilities that, like car parks, are going to have to adapt to new uses and a new mobility". Rock added. "The private company has advanced the actions that the administration could take, but it is difficult for it to find the right fit to be able to execute them," he emphasized. "The urban plans of 30 years ago are useless," Navarro stressed. In Espín's opinion, the solution involves "a shared and collaborative use of public space."
The Prologis representative added to this reflection, ensuring that the administration has an outdated vision of logistics. He sees it, he said, as an activity with little added value, little talent, a lot of trucks, a lot of wheels and abandoned polygons. “But the logistics have changed a lot; It has become a sexy sector, also in the capital market”, he affirmed, but not before demanding that land be released in the cities and their areas of influence to deploy more logistics centers. Currently, to free up land, companies are looking for alternatives: they develop logistics centers further away or regenerate spaces, such as reconverting old industries that have become obsolete. "Once again, the sector is resilient and is looking for solutions to be able to provide alternatives to demand," explained the Vice President and Country Manager of Prologis Spain, which has warehouses of different sizes in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona. In his opinion, if alternatives are not sought, there will be tension in prices.
In addition to calling for greater public-private collaboration, the expert panel also called for private-private collaboration. The ecoDeliver co-founder recalled that there are many actors involved in the sector, located in different links of the chain. “Nobody can defend that one alone is capable of offering a service, in accordance with their quality criteria, in the entire geographical area where they are working”, he said. However, he regretted the reservations that exist when "opening the door to a competitor, to a second actor and to sharing resources to make logistics more efficient and to be able to jointly reach the objectives" pursued by the sector.
Following this reflection, the co-founder of Geever asserted that "it is not about competing, but about combining the different distribution systems." "You have to collaborate and specialize," he continued, after recalling that a very high percentage of vehicles circulate through the city with only 40% of the load.
Consumer behavior was also the subject of debate. “Not everything can be at the moment you want; It has been like that, but it is not sustainable”, Sorigué opined, adding immediately that the current model “has more disadvantages than advantages”. "E-commerce customers are increasingly asking for more customization, when international logistics and global transport chains have to be more standard," stressed Espín, who called for courage to put an end to this "ultra-customization in the last mile." “Paying zero for transportation is not correct; the right thing is to pay the fair cost, ”he summarized.
Lokkegaard pointed out that in the Nordic countries, home delivery does not exist, it is an additional service that is paid separately. He therefore defended making consumers aware of the repercussions of their decision-making. He pointed out that the Green Button Project study, carried out by MIT, reveals that, by the simple fact of communicating the impact of choosing a certain type of delivery, the end customer ends up reconsidering and rectifying their decision.
Roca also opted to re-educate the customer in buying through e-commerce, but he assured that the sector must also put solutions on the table to correct the situation, as it is already doing.
