INTRODUCTION

BESTFACT BASIC TOPICS

NEWS FLASH/TICKER

SUMMARYDear reader

BESTFACT can now look back on about one year of setting up the best practice factory for freight transport. We have discussed a lot about innovation, transfer and profit and learnt by heart that the creation of a high quality “BEST Practice” product takes time and lots of new ideas.

Not to get lost in methodology, our two international cluster workshops showed practical solutions and most recent trends in freight transport providing the perfect framework for networking and exchange of experiences.

We have now developed a perfect basis for the next year to go beyond standard with high quality Best Practice Quick Info Sheets which can broadly be used by public and private parties in freight transport.

I would like to invite you to join our network, share experiences and get inspired by a strong BESTFACT partnership!

The countdown to the announcement of the inaugural winners of the BESTFACT awards is about to begin. The award seeks to highlight an outstan-ding case in each of the three clusters, with the three eventual winners receiving their prizes at the BESTFACT 2013 Conference. There they will have the opportunity to present their case to a captive audience and benefit from extensive, specialist media coverage.

For those keen to take part, it’s not too late! An open call for fresh cases of best practices in urban freight; green logistics and co-modality; and e-freight, wishing to be considered for this prestigious accolade, will be opened early in 2013. These entries will join those practices already considered by BESTFACT’s partners in 2012 in a fair and objective initial selection procedure. Once this process is complete, the final winners will be chosen from the remaining 3 best practices in each cluster, according both to the views of an independent jury and the results of a public poll to be made available via the BESTFACT and partner websites.

The aim of these annual awards is not only to reward the excellent work of the winners, but also to capture the interest of the freight and logistics industry at large, by providing the chance to win a valuable showcase for their own company’s best practice.

The BESTFACT partnership is a perfect combination of private and academic experts in freight transport and BESTFACT can be seen as an “agent of the change”. The colleagues are developing a Best practice methodology guaranteeing results that are going beyond the outcome of well-known best practice projects like BESTUFS, PROMIT, efreight and others. One important part of the work in BESTFACT are the so-called implementation actions. In their framework new best practices and policies can be created and the results are enriching the broad case collection process with specific focus on transferability.

During the first Industrial project board meeting the position of point for the first implementation actions has now been set and the bidding process will be opened in the first quarter of 2013.

The BESTFACT project board encloses as external experts from industry Francesco Massa (IVECO), Herman Journée (Port of Amsterdam), Sergio Barbarino (Procter&Gamble) and Servet Balcioglu (ATOS). With their high level experience in freight transport, they are guaranteeing a strong relevance of the work in BESTFACT for the transport sector.

“DG MOVE has identified ine�ciencies in Urban Freight Logistics and consequent objectives. These include the improvement of ICT, the deployment of potential inland waterways, a shift towards night deliveries, a revamping of intermodal transfer facilities...To achieve all this goals, a greater cooperation among all relevant actors is required”.

Fleur Breuillin DG MOVE – European Commission

“The case of London is an example of how urban freight planning can bring benefits and avoid the collapsing of the system. Public-private communica-tion, retiming of deliveries, improvement of routings are key challenges for city governments dealing with urban tra�c developments”.

Ian Wainwright. Road Freight Programme Manager at Transport for London

Marcel Huschebeck,

BESTFACT co-coordinator

BESTFACT Best Practice Awards

Industrial project board meeting

Bestfact Topics ….…..

NewsFlash………….....

Special Section……….

Bestfact Events……...

Other projects……......

External Events………

Photo Competition....

Open Call………………..

About Bestfact……….

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BESTFACT messages are reachingout for the audienceNEWSLETTER 1

BESTFACT newsletter issue no.1: December 2012

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NEWSLETTER 1 BESTFACT newsletter issue no.1: December 2012

SPECIAL SECTION

BESTFACT ‘s message and experience went high-level during last November. EIA, the leading partner in dissemination, was in fact invited to join the Working Group the Working Group on Intermodal Transport and Logistics of the United Nation Economic Committee for Europe (the UN section for Europe, based in Geneva) and to participate in a bilateral meeting with the Cabinet of the Vicepresident of the European Commission and Commissioner for Transport, Siim Kallas.

The UNECE discussion was centred on “ITS: opportunities and challenges for intermodal transport” and saw the presence of qualified speakers from national ministries and international organisations. Among them, Peter Wolters from EIA, which has a registered NGO-status within the UN, highlighted the numerous initiatives that are running now, aiming to foster innovation and e�ciency in the supply chain.

On the other hand, the meeting with the Cabinet of Vicepresident Kallas saw a lively discussion about the possible role of the European Commission in pre-defining core values shared by all stakeholders in the freight sector. These will focus on two aspects: firstly time, raising the question of whether all EU industries really need Just-In-Time concepts rather than ‘slow but reliable’ logistics in certain cases, and secondly the more e�cient use of existing capacities (infra, loading units, etc.) instead of automatically increasing weights and dimensions, while expanding infrastructure without sustainable KPIs.

Taking advantage of the two high-level meetings, in both occasions EIA was proud to mention the launch of BESTFACT, which was in fact based on a call for proposal from DG MOVE some years ago. It is worth to notice that the European Commis-sion requested a sort of single window or 'the' reference point for EU freight & urban best practices: another door is open for BESTFACT.

BESTFACT reaches UN and EU

Bilateral meeting with the Cabinet of the Vicepresident of the European Commission and Commissioner for Transport, Siim Kallas

Peter Wolters, from EIA, represented the BESTFACT project during this meeting.

BESTFACT EVENTS

The BESTFACT 1st international cluster workshop “Eco-e�cient Solutions in Freight Transport Chains” showed excellent examples how to contribute to the common goal of “minimization of the number of freight movements and their distances” so as to deliver benefits to the whole European society. The need for new ideas and practical information on how to transfer good freight transport solutions into a new context is tremendous and will be the core working area of BESTFACT’s four year life time.

Comprehensive information can be found at http://www.bestfact.net/amsterdam.html

How to reduce CO2 in urban freight? Which strategies help to achieve zero emission urban freight in Europe? These issues were at the centre of interactive discussions of about 70 delegates at the BESTFACT urban freight workshop “Public and Private Partnerships for Zero Emission Urban Freight in Europe”.

DG MOVE made use of the workshop as a platform for the discussion of ine�cien-cies in Urban Freight Logistics and consequent objectives: These include the improvement of ICT, the deployment of potential inland waterways, a shift towards night deliveries, a revamping of intermodal transfer facilities. To achieve all this goals, a greater cooperation among all relevant actors is required.

Within di�erent sessions, the floor was given to both city and company represen-tatives who brought a Best Practice example from their own city or business, and also talked about what they think is needed to overcome barriers.

Comprehensive information can be found at http://www.bestfact.net/brussels.html

Cluster workshop Brussels – 6th & 7th December 2012

Cluster workshop AMSTERDAM – 21st & 22nd June 2012

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NEWSLETTER 1 BESTFACT newsletter issue no.1: December 2012

With the financial supportof the European Commission

CORRESPONDING PROJECT SECTION

Refrigerated urban distribution implies high negative impact for Urban environment because the pollution associated to the standard logistics activities is loaded with additional negative impact of the refrigeration equipment (more emissions and noise). EFRUD is a LIFE+ project, with the financial support of the European Commission, aimed at reducing the environmental impact due to the transport of perishable goods that need to be refrigerated (e.g. farm produce, milk and dairy products, meat, medicines and medical stu�, etc…) during the distribution operations within urban areas. EFRUD is an innovative transport solution which includes mainly a bimodal medium-van, a refrigerator at zero emissions (based on a passive-cooling system), and an in-vehicle diagnostic systems to control the driving style and all the parameters on the distribution process (energy consumptions, vehicle emissions, etc.). More info: www.efrud.info

Capacity in the European transport system is being structurally underutilized: statistics show that a quarter of all trucks are driving around empty and that the remaining vehicles are on average only loaded at 57% of their maximum load. “Carpooling for cargo”, also known as horizontal collaboration or smart bundling of goods flows of di�erent companies, o�ers a powerful and innovative solution to tackle this problem.

Companies who collaborate and bundle their logistic flows can achieve important benefits on economic, social and environmental levels. Up to now, shippers who want to collaborate in this way are too often hindered by practical obstacles in their way.

The mission of CO³, co-funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission, is to force a structural breakthrough in the competitiveness and sustainability of European logistics by stimulating horizontal collaboration between European shippers. More info: www.co3-project.eu

EFRUD – Emissions Free Refrigerated Urban Distribution

CO3 - Collaborative Concepts for Co-Modality

EXTERNAL EVENTS SECTION

On November 27th-29th, Amsterdam RAI Convention and Exhibition Centre hosted the 2012 edition of Intermodal Europe, the annual event where the whole intermodal sector convenes in order to have a clear picture of the upcoming technological and market developments and to have a glimpse of predicted future scenarios. This year’s edition focused mainly on containerization and port procedures and activities, without forgetting to give an expert insight on the way to ensure a better use of existing capacity and infrastructure. BESTFACT was there through the presence of one of its partners, EIA.

In parallel to the exhibition, a dense programme of conferences. was designed. One Specific issue is gaining overwhelming attention: costs. Cutting costs has literally been “the red thread” of the discussion, making clear that the economic downturn is still casting dark shadow on freight transport.

Shippers, have strongly a�rmed the need to improve e�ciency along the supply chain as a way to absorb and limit the costs due to the increase of fuel prices, disruptions along the chain, taxes etc., having in mind the principle that no cost has to be charged on consumers. E�ciency can therefore be achieved only by ensuring e�ective commu-nication among all the actors (specifically shippers and providers) and creating a truly competitive market, where the opportunistic players will disappear. Nonetheless, the lack of a coherent and smart European infrastructure has never been so strongly felt, representing the main solution for achieving the percentage of modal shift requested by the European Commission.

Forwarders, on their side, agree with the opinion of shippers but feel obliged to point to the fact that, on average, a container is running with only the 43% of its available space full and this is, in the majority of cases, due to the lack of cooperation among shippers, who are often unwilling to share their data on goods and shipments with other companies.

As a consequence, a role could be played in this field by some ‘neutral facilitators’ that, because of their intrinsic nature, may be trusted by all the actors involved. In this respect, freight villages are the entities that could adopt such a task successfully.

As far as port procedures are concerned, use of ICT technologies has been widely appreciated, especially the ones meant to better plan the distribution of time slots for trucks arriving to and departing from port areas for loading/unloading operations. Finally, full attention was given to the berthing phase, which has too often been considered as an “invisible activity”. On the contrary, improving the berthing process can result in shipping lines being able to proceed at a lower speed than usual and arrive slightly later to the port of call, and therefore to have reduced fuel consumption, which means fewer costs.

Intermodal Europe has clearly shown that intermodality has plenty of solutions, or better; intermodality is the solution to achieve the double objective of sustainability and cost reduction. Solutions are at your fingertips, you only need to catch them.

economic, social and environmental levels. Up to now, shippers who want to collaborate in this way

The mission of CO³, co-funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission, is to

INTERMODAL EUROPE 2012

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NEWSLETTER 1 BESTFACT newsletter issue no.1: December 2012

BESTFACT photo competitionEach and every day, the world of freight transport is o�ering new facets and surprising impressions. Therefore, we would like to invite you to send us your most up-to-date photo(s) related to urban freight, green logistics & co-modality and efreight.

Regularly, we will award the best and most popular photo: 200 Euro travel voucher for one of the BESTFACT conferences, publication of name and company and further details.

Participation is possible via the BESTFACT knowledge corner: http://www.bestfact.net/photo.html

Now, it is up to you!

BESTFACT is tendering subcontractsBESTFACT can support you in implementing Best Practices and needs your expertise and knowled-ge to develop Innovative Policy Schemes to overcome Best Practice bottlenecks.

Our project can support your activity linking you as a subcontractor to the project activities. We are looking for actions developing and implementing Best Practices and for the development of Innovative policy schemes in the field of Urban Freight Transport, Green Logistics and Co-modality as well as eFreight. Actions should preferably address the transferability and scalability of Best Practices while Innovative Policy Actions should be linked to overcome critical bottlenecks for the transferability of Best Practices.

Interested? Please have a closer look at the application guidelines to be found on the BESTFACT knowledge corner: http://www.bestfact.net/implementation.html

ALL ABOUT BESTFACT

www.bestfact.net info@bestfact.net

The objective of BESTFACT is to develop, disseminate and enhance the utilization of best practices and innovations in freight transport that contribute to meeting European transport policy objectives with regard to competitiveness and environmental impact. BESTFACT builds upon the work of the projects BESTUFS, PROMIT and BESTLOG and integrates interrelated areas of the key freight logistics challenges the European Union is confronted with.

Three clusters “Urban freight“, “Green logistics and Co-modality” and “eFreight” have been chosen as they represent the most pressing issues in freight transport and logistics in terms of economic, social and environmental sustainability, as well as being closely linked to important innovations and developments in freight service provision. SMEs, companies in general, regional and local authorities are welcome to share their own Best Practice cases.

BESTFACT receives funding from the EC's 7th Framework Programme