A circular evolution
Svenska Retursystem, Sweden’s leading logistic company, has pledged to make all domestic transports fossil-free by 2025.
To get there is not impossible, but we have to work closely together. At Sonat, we have collaborated with Svenska Retursystem since 2000, to make sure that the flow of all transports is made seamless, solving the complexity of nation-wide circularity.
Svenska Retursystem revolutionised the grocery market in 1997, introducing small, lightweight, ergonomic, stackable, easy-to-clean, reusable craters, guaranteed to last for 15 years. This changed everything.
Twenty years later, more than 150 million reusable crates and 8 million reusable pallets are circulating the Swedish ecosystem. While the design of the crates was a part of the solution the movement and rhythm of the craters were vital for the industry to acknowledge and adopt them.
It is in circularity of the craters the system reaches its full potential. That is why SRS began a close partnership with Sonat, at an early stage of the journey. To incentivise a sound supply chain, the users of the crates and pallets need to get a supply then be empowered to fill, sort, tag, track, distribute, check, empty, stack, reload, return, clean and re-distribute, all in a seamless circular manner. With a Sonat enabled solution and transparent process control, each crater is optimising the flow, monitored, and on time.
We see it as a constant evolution. Since the beginning of our partnership, SRS has scaled, and we have grown with them. In 2000, Sonat was responsible for transport planning and booking. Today, Sonat is enabling the logistical chain from order management to monitoring, measurement and analysis – acting as a natural part of SRS’s ongoing technical development and digitalisation.
Sonat’s offering includes acting as SRS’s in-house logistics department. Operating through four facilities SRS facilities across Sweden – Helsingborg, Örebro, Mölnlycke and Västerås. Last year, SRS and Sonat reduced the CO2 emission of Sweden’s grocery industry with 32.000 tons.
These results-driven business solutions are dependent on Sonat’s duality, providing strategy and analysis as well as operative outsourcing. ‘Our partners are a fully integrated part of our operation, and without strong partnerships, we lose our strength,’ says Anna. Elgh CEO at SRS, ‘Smart pooling is the next step for us, as a way of improving efficiency even more. Together with Sonat, we can take SRS into the future.’
The collective journey towards 2025, includes increased automatisation, including testing of electric trucks, but also an even further study of how digitalisation and data can introduce tighter business rhythms for 1500 SRS customers.
