Friday 16 October 2020

Sainsbury’s swaps lead-acid pallet trucks for sustainable alternatives

Sainsbury's has announced it is swapping its lead-acid pallet trucks for sustainable alternatives powered by kinetic energy and lithium-ion batteries.

The retail giant, which has committed to becoming net zero across its own operations by 2040, says it is the first UK supermarket to make the switch to lithium manual handling trucks and notes the replacement programme of 1,200 trucks is the biggest completed by Toyota in Europe to date.

The annual energy savings forecast to be made are the equivalent of powering almost 700 average-sized UK homes.

Danny Malyon, Head of Facilities Management at Sainsbury’s said: “We’re constantly striving to work as efficiently as possible as well as pioneering new ways to work more sustainably.

"The new fleet will ensure our store colleagues have improved access to very important equipment for them to undertake their work, while significantly reducing the energy used. This new manual handling equipment will make a big difference to store operations, our maintenance bill and our energy consumption overall."