Sustainable future for transport

Sustainable practices continue to be an evolving discipline, but what cannot be disputed is the rise in sustainably conscious customers who believe green transport is a key lever to reduce their carbon footprint – and that of who they purchase products and services from. Patrick Hughes in charge of UK Transport Purchasing at Rehau, discusses how the brand has evolved its practices.

In the last few years, the UK window industry has come together to embrace sustainability as a key pillar that all businesses need to adhere to. The Windows Sustainability Action Plan in 2010 indicated a robust action plan towards this and this has been followed up with several other initiatives including the Circular Economy (CE) and the Vinyl Plus initiative, which indicates that the message in the industry is clear: to improve the sustainability of a window through its life cycle and the supply chain.

For several years, Rehau has championed sustainable manufacturing, developed recycling and green initiatives, and incorporated sustainability into its business strategy. Its recent rebrand has further strengthened this focus as the brand continues to develop its products and services with an end-customer focused strategy around core brand values: innovation, trust and reliability. This focus aligns with the brand’s vision to produce windows that are reinvented for modern life while engineering progress to enhance lives.

Continual assessments of environmental and economic sustainability of PVC products and processes along the whole supply chain is a necessity for Rehau and underlines its values – transport being one such factor that can be analysed to ascertain where efficiencies can be made.

Rehau, together with Ceva Logistics, has adopted a redefined approach to the transportation of products and waste materials. This new four-step process is currently being trialled by an established Rehau customer and has already demonstrated some fantastic results.

Step 1. Rehau extruded products are collected from the production facility and transferred to a dedicated state of the art warehousing location.

Step 2. Product is then transported from the warehouse to the customer’s site based on their order requirements.

Step 3. Loaded trailer is left on site with the customer who can unload the products then re-load with either empty stillages or bags of off-cuts.

Step 4. Rehau arranges for collection of the trailer where off-cuts will be taken to Rehau’s recycling facility/ PVCR and empty stillages can be re-introduced into the supply chain.

Returned off cuts are re-processed and used within co-extruded window profiles manufactured by Rehau. This process provides Rehau with a closed loop product lifecycle thus substantially improving its recycling and sustainability numbers, a key factor that end customers look for with suppliers today.

This new transportation process, which is being trialled with just one customer at the moment, has already successfully reduced the number of trailers on the road and has significantly and positively reduced Rehau’s carbon footprint by approximately 170 tonnes a year. This figure is expected to substantially increase once fully implemented across Rehau’s entire customer base.

This streamlined process also improves the quality of Rehau’s transportation operations enabling the brand to plan and allocate resources more effectively.

The new trailers travelling around the country have also been kitted out with new livery that highlights Rehau’s rebrand messages, and communicates its global vision of producing windows reinvented for modern life. By the end of the second quarter this year, the brand is introducing a text message service that will inform the customer of their scheduled delivery day and time, part of the ongoing commitment to improving the quality of transportation services to Rehau customers.

It has become increasingly apparent that transport has a vital role to play in supporting sustainable economic growth in the UK. It also has a part to play in UK’s overall framework for reducing carbon emissions for which regulations are already in place in key cities across the country, including London, today. Rehau is confident this new process is a stepping-stone to effectively contributing towards a greener economy and will continue to build on this initiative in years to come.