E-trucks make Woolies the ‘green’ grocer

Supermarket chain Woolworths has placed an order for 25 Foton T5 electric refrigerated trucks and two more made by SAIC to start electrifying its groceries home delivery fleet in Sydney, operating out of the Mascot and Caringbah Customer Fulfilment Centres as they have the required charging infrastructure.

The Chinese-made Foton and SAIC trucks are fitted out to Woolworths specifications, have a battery range sufficient for completing daily home deliveries in urban areas before charging at base overnight and are fitted with electric refrigeration systems that draw power from the vehicle’s main battery.

By 2025, Woolworths intends to run all of its operations in Australia and New Zealand on renewable energy, and by 2030, it hopes to have a fleet of more than 1200 all-electric home delivery trucks.

Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci said: “Our home delivery trucks are a familiar sight in neighbourhoods across Australia, and within the next seven years, we want to make every one of them electric and free of fossil fuels.”

As part of its decarbonisation program, Woolworths intends to terminate all fleet orders for combustion engine vehicles from 2027 and to have decommissioned more than 3000 of its combustion engine vehicles by 2030.

Woolworths says this will contribute to a 60 per cent reduction in its transportation emissions. It has also pledged to surpass net zero and actively remove more emissions from the atmosphere than it creates by the year 2050, if not before.