Ekol's environmentalist solution, the Intermodal Transportation saves 110,000 trees each month...
The block railway project that was developed by Ekol Logistics in 2008 has made a remarkable achievement to decrease the road transportation part of the total travel distance to 2,000 kms only while it was 7,000 kms for the Turkish export commodities that are sent to European countries. With this practical implementation, a fuel save of 1,700 liters per vehicle is ensured while the earth is rapidly running out of natural resources. Another interpretation of this is that the implementation means saving of 110,000 trees every month. Ekol made an investment of EUR 18 million for the purpose in 2011 and purchased 509 new vehicles to increase the number of departures to 8300.
Listed among the leading integrated logistics service providers in both Turkey and Europe with its expanded fleet of 1.400 vehicles and 3,500 employees, Ekol has been trying for years in transferring majority part of the transportation of commodities that are within the Customs Union framework to railway transport within free movement in Continent Europe. On the other hand, different approaches by different countries on transportation policies could not have been gathered on a parallel ground. As a result of this, Turkish commodities lose their competition advantages on pricing since they need to take road transport from one end of Europe to the other. The second negative effect of road transport is the greenhouse effect developing during the road transport.
Ekol Logistics has used Intermodal System, an environment friendly and one of the important means of green logistics, to decrease travel distance of Turkish commodities within Europe to 2,000 kms while they had to travel 7,000 kms formerly. As an active member of the CREAM Consortium (Customer-driven Rail-freight services on an European mega-corridor based on Advanced business and operating Models) established as per the 6th Framework Program by the European Commission, Ekol Logistics has been spending efforts for transferring the main part of transportation onto railways in accordance with European standards on the one hand, and also for implementing a more environmentalist and faster model by bypassing the Eastern European roads through sea way due to long delays during border passes.
With the block railway implementation, Ekol Logistics loads Turkish commodities onto Ro-Ro vessels at the Istanbul, Izmir and Mersin ports without with only semi-trailers to ship them to Trieste port of Italy in 3 days. On the day of arrival to Trieste, the semi-trailers are shipped by railway to reach to the Worms Terminal of Germany within one day. The semi-trailers are taken from the railway in Worms to load onto German registered trailer trucks for transportation within Germany or to Benelux countries, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, etc.
Ekol Logistics has made an important step to stop greenhouse effect by the block train implementation. In this implementation, less contaminating materials are emitted because no trailer trucks are used during the main transportation, noise contamination is prevented, a considerable energy save is achieved and minimizing the CO2 mark is possible in a large scale. For each service, 5,000 kms of less travel is made for each semi-trailer for their drives to and from a destination. This means a save of 1,700 liters of fuel, 4,590 kg of NOx and 0.17 kg particles.
When Ekol started the block railway system in 2008, 18 departures were done with 32 semi-trailers on each service. The number of services increased to 92 in 2009 and to 210 in 2010. Ekol has realized 295 block railway departures so far in the year 2011 and the estimated number of departures will be 500 until the end of the year. This means there is a 2800% increase with the usage of this advantageous system and 40,000,000 less driveway will be taken in total with the estimated 500 departures is realized until the end of this year. This means 1000 travels around the world will be saved. 500 services enables a save of 36,720 tons of CO2, 13 million 600 thousand liters of fuel and 95 thousand 200 kg of NOx.
With this practical implementation, a fuel save of 1,700 liters per vehicle is ensured while the earth is rapidly running out of natural resources. Another interpretation of this is that the implementation means saving of 110,000 trees every month. Ekol made an investment of EUR 18 million for the purpose in 2011 and purchased 509 new vehicles to increase the number of departures to 295.
