ECS's new high-bay warehouse has been fully operational for over a year. It marks the next significant step towards increasingly sustainable logistics, with ECS aiming to replace as much road transport as possible with rail transport. The new high-bay warehouse doubles the current capacity of rail-connected warehouses to a total of 160,000 pallets. By next year, ECS aims to increase the share of rail transport to 50%.
ECS is committed to a sustainable logistics future and has therefore expanded the capacity of its three existing rail-connected warehouses. The new high-bay warehouse, located near the existing low-rise warehouse on Lancelot Blondeellaan in Zeebrugge, expands the existing storage infrastructure by 82.000 pallet spaces. This increases the total capacity of rail-connected warehouses in Zeebrugge to 160.000 pallets. When the capacity of the trimodal hub in Dourges, Northern France, is included, ECS boasts a rail-connected storage capacity of no less than 220.000 pallets.
CO2 reduction
ECS aims to increase the share of rail transport to 50% by 2025 and to over 65% by 2030. "Our strategy not only contributes to reducing road network congestion but also results in significant CO2 reduction," says ECS CEO Sven Pieters. "Reducing road transport also offers operational advantages. Deliveries by rail are more efficient, allow for more reliable warehouse occupancy estimation, and significantly reduce the number of truck journeys."
Sustainable and competitive advantage
The construction of the new warehouse and rail connection coincided with an expansion of ECS’s multimodal network. Earlier this year, ECS launched two weekly rail connections between Zeebrugge and the Czech Republic, removing no less than 8.800 trucks from the road annually.
Besides the sustainable nature of rail transport, ECS offers its customers a competitive advantage by optimizing transport via railways. By handling as much transport as possible by rail, loading, unloading, and delivery timings become even more reliable. ECS is also known as the specialist in transport to and from the United Kingdom. Here too, investments are made in rail transport, which is very challenging via conventional rail and limited by the Eurotunnel. Therefore, ECS offers a combination of rail transport and shortsea shipping. Conventional rail wagons arrive in Zeebrugge at one of the rail-connected warehouses, are stored there, and later transported just in time to British retailers. ECS optimizes the load by maximizing both the cubic and tonnage capacities of trucks, which are shipped unaccompanied to the nearest port to customers. This method saves 455 kilometers of road transport compared to the classic route via Dover.
ECS continues to strive for innovative solutions in the logistics sector, and the new high-bay warehouse is an important step towards more sustainability and efficiency in transport.