Archives



Freight News, Inland waterway, Logistics


The drinks are on Haropa and its Paris partners

[ October 30, 2023   //   ]

Sogestran Logistics has been delivering drinks to cafés, hotels and restaurants in the heart of Paris through Debilly, port opposite the Eiffel Tower. The scheme is being supported by the French waterways authority – Voies Navigables de France (VNF) – and Le Havre, Rouen and Paris port operator, Haropa, along with the Paris City Authority and the Greater Paris authority.
It is reloading vehicles operated by specialist wholesaler OBD Grand Paris. OBD Grand Paris vehicles finish their first Paris delivery run between 8 and 10am but if there is a need to make a second run, they are obliged to make the trip between central Paris and the logistics storage site outside the city during rush hours.
They can avoid this by reloading at the barge waiting for them in the heart of Paris, saving time and reducing the load on delivery drivers.
Sogestran Logistics has chartered its ZULU 03 self-propelled barge for twice-weekly runs between Gennevilliers and Debilly ports to reload OBD Grand Paris vehicles.
The test programme is also being used to anticipate urban logistics needs for the 2024 Olympics.
Sogestran Logistics is a subsidiary of the Sogestran in Le Havre and specialises in multimodal river, rail and road transport. Operating through its Blue Line Logistics entity, it is developing urban logistics solutions focused on river-based logistics with the goal of making waterways once again central to urban logistics. It operates self-unloading, self-propelled barges for the river segment and also handles goods transport to and from the port in order to offer customers a door-to-door service.
As a supplier of beverages to Paris cafés, hotels and restaurants, family firm OBD Grand Paris delivers daily to 2,500 establishments. Products include bottled water, beer, juice, soft drinks, syrups, wine, liqueurs andcoffee, two-thirds of them in returnable or reusable containers.
Director of OBD Grand Paris, Pascal Clément, said: “The benefits go beyond the purely environmental. This solution helps enhance customer satisfaction (thanks to greater control of the timing of deliveries) and improves the working conditions of the delivery drivers (by cutting the hours spent driving). This also allows us to address to some extent the issue of recruitment in a sector subject to very tight labour supply.”
Director, France, at Blue Line Logistics, a subsidiary of Sogestran Logistics, Alexis Chapolard, pointed out that one of the advantages of the ZULU03 is that it has a crane on board eliminating the need for dockside equipment. Once a delivery has been completed, the multi-user dock becomes available again for other users.
Antoine Berbain, deputy general manager of Haropa Port added: “We are ready to make this service permanent from 2024, especially with the Olympic and Paralympic Games in mind, starting out from the Gennevilliers multimodal facility and going to the urban ports on the Paris sector of the Seine – not only Debilly, but also Austerlitz – helping in this way to limit road congestion and CO2 emissions.”
Some 170 pallets of beverages and 120 pallets of returned empty bottles and drums have been carried during the trial as a whole, on the basis of two trips per week on Tuesday and Friday, with increased volumes in September and October.

Tags: