Sustainability initiative of Kärcher and LKW WALTER

Transports from Romania to Germany shifted to rail

In cooperation with LKW WALTER, Kärcher shifts a large part of its supplier transports from Romania to Germany to Combined Transport. Together with the Austrian specialist for full truck loads, since the end of June 2020   the transports have been handled to a large extent in an environmentally friendly way via the newly created Oradea - Stuttgart rail route. Thus,  710,000 kg of CO₂ are being saved every year.

The expansion of LKW WALTER's Europe-wide Combined Transport network by the new rail route from Oradea to Stuttgart with five departures a week came at the right time. Because every full truck load to and from creates a saving of approx. 1,000 km on the road. Annualised to the transport volume, this amounts to 710,000 kg of CO_₂ per year. This corresponds to the filter effect of a 71 hectare forest which is roughly comparable with the area of over 100 football pitches.

The new train connection is a further milestone in more than 20 years of cooperation between the two family-owned companies and complements previous joint routes in Combined Transport such as from Italy to Scandinavia, Benelux and France. The basis for the cooperation is the sustainability efforts of both companies. The cleaning specialist Kärcher has already been steadily reducing the CO₂ emissions caused by the company for several years as part of its sustainability programme. A further focus is on improving the energy efficiency of plants and buildings, thereby reducing energy consumption and preserving resources. In addition to CO₂ neutrality, the use of recycled materials in products and the reduction of plastic in packaging materials are on the sustainability agenda of the world market leader in cleaning technology. For its efforts in the environmental sector, the company was voted one of the three most sustainable major companies in Germany in 2020 at the German Sustainability Award ceremony.

LKW WALTER, for its part, is the European market leader in full truck load transport and is also considered one of the leading providers in Europe for environmentally friendly transport solutions. In addition to the many activities of its own SHEQ management, more than 360,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide are saved annually through intermodal transport solutions alone as part of the sustainability initiative "Green Transport". Compared to road transport, LKW WALTER reduces CO_₂ emissions in Combined Transport by rail by 55 percent. With Short Sea Shipping these are even 75 percent. Over and above many awards from long-standing customers, LKW WALTER was also awarded the Sustainability Prize for Logistics 2019 by BVL Austria and Germany for its Europe-wide Combined Transport network and its important contribution to environmental protection.