Isramart : HP Australia overhauls its supply chain to reduce CO2

Isramart news:
Hewlett-Packard Australia’s (HP) Imaging & Printing Group (IPG) says it has reduced the organisation’s local carbon emissions for product sourced by sea by 41 per cent after revising its supply chain model.

After assessing the company’s supply chain costs and CO2 footprint a year ago, HP IPG analysed the CO2 footprint for their product deliveries via modes of transport including sea, rail and truck.

Following this analysis, HP decided to implement supply chain projects that would land product closer to customers using sea, rather than using rail and road to move freight to customers.

“We conducted a study with our worldwide office at the end of our third quarter in July and found that there has been a dramatic decrease in our environmental footprint since we have implemented the new supply chain model,” said Richard Bailey, vice president of IPG, South Pacific.

HP worked with local supply chain partners DHL, Star Track Express and regionally across the organisation to develop a new model that reduces the total CO2 emitted to move freight from the HP finished goods plants in APJ to end customers in Australia.

Previously all IPG hardware was being delivered nationally from HP’s central distribution office (CDO) in Sydney, with 40 per cent of all supplies landing in Fremantle and then being delivered via rail to customers nationally. A significant 40 per cent of hardware from the CDO was also delivered to Melbourne by truck. Previous truck deliveries from the CDO were not optimised to use larger trucks and HP was emitting 6,400 tonnes of CO2 per annum in 2008.

Under the new supply chain model, HP changed its port of entry from Fremantle to Melbourne and Sydney, which increases the distance travelled by sea and decreases rail and truck distances travelled to deliver goods, resulting in less CO2 emissions. HP has also implemented a freight optimisation project, which optimises land freight delivery by using trucks with higher storage capacity, and therefore minimising the total number of trucks required. In 2009, the HP IPG Australia CO2 emissions from freight delivery were down to 3,776 tonnes per annum.

“The new supply chain model has saved over 2,600 tonnes of CO2 emitted by HP Australia over the last year, which equates to 21.6 acres of forest preserved from deforestation or 66,666 trees grown for 10 years from seedlings,” said Mr Bailey. “This has been the largest HP CO2 saving project in APJ for 2009.”

HP is working towards a goal to reduce its sea freight CO2 emissions by a further 20 percent by 2013.