NHS and Unipart partner for fully electric trucks

The NHS will soon be receiving medical consumable products delivered by a fleet of eight fully electric trucks, as part of the Department for Transport’s £10 million Battery Electric Truck Trial (BETT).

NHS Supply Chain and Unipart Logistics are part of the 12 month pilot initiative which will see 20 DAF LF Electric trucks providing services to the NHS.

NHS Supply Chain is commencing the use of eight 19-tonne LF Electric rigids with refrigerated bodies at four locations across the country: Bury St Edmunds, Normanton, Rugby and Alfreton. It will feed back real-time performance data for the zero emission vehicles.

The BETT focuses on vehicles, charging infrastructure, user training, repair and maintenance, and total cost-of-ownership, providing operational insight across a variety of duty cycles.

“Everything on our zero emission vehicles is electric, even the refrigeration units. Driving down our carbon emissions is one of our top priorities and this is just one of the ways we’re supporting the NHS to achieve their net-zero target by 2045, which has wide-ranging health benefits for us all, not least around air quality,” said Chris Holmes, Director of Supply Chain at NHS Supply Chain.

Adding, Claire Salmon, NHS Supply Chain Director at Unipart Logistics said: “We are excited to be working with our customer NHS Supply Chain to run the Battery-Electric Truck Trial, which also supports the Unipart UN Race To Zero commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030 and net-zero by 2050.”