Sustainability and carbon emissions are key considerations for enterprise retailers according to the latest barometer from Bringg, a data-led delivery and fulfilment cloud platform provider.
Retailers are going green to reduce carbon emissions and meet net-zero initiatives its Bringg Barometer: State of Retail Delivery and Fulfilment reported. Respondents indicated that fleets with EV are becoming common delivery vehicles to use for fulfilment. Over half of retail respondents are using eco-friendly options such as electric bikes or cars.
The survey showed 56% of retailers are using fleets with EV vehicles, and 1 in 3 using bike fleets. While, 33% are also turning to crowdsourced delivery; this, along with using multiple fleets for different geographic regions, and bike fleets are all methods of supporting hyperlocal and fast delivery.
Additionally, the barometer highlighted that traditional methods of a single delivery provider is no longer able to meet new e-commerce delivery volumes, as seen by the 55% of retailers using multiple fleets for delivery.
The use of multiple sustainable fleets is in part to try and achieve the goal of next-day delivery, with 99% of retailers aiming to offer the service by 2025.
There is also a clear trend towards last-mile delivery, the report stated with more than two-thirds of retailers are using department and mall stores as local fulfilment centres or ‘dark stores’ (67%). Many of the businesses surveyed already use ship-from-store (58%) and micro-fulfilment centres (44%) to get closer to customers.
Furthermore, the barometer reported concerns retailers have as a result of the e-commerce boom with almost 1 in 4 (24%) struggling to meet delivery times. This challenge, along with a lack of visibility, points to delivery operations that are not set up for next-day delivery, including a lack of visibility and too far a distance between current warehousing and delivery points.
