Danish Crown refreshes fleet thanks to Salford Van Hire

Chilled meat supplier Danish Crown has refreshed its fleet with the help of Salford Van Hire and electric refrigeration specialist Hultsteins.

Danish Crown’s UK heavy vehicle fleet comprises eight 13.6m refrigerated trailers and five DAF tractor units. They have been supplied by Salford Van Hire on a five-year contract hire agreement and became one of the latest targets of the food supplier’s sustainability efforts having turned to Hultsteins’ Ecogen range, which transforms existing diesel transport refrigeration units (TRUs) to electric

“It’s a modern fleet, and the company is constantly looking at how it can improve its carbon footprint,” explained Steve McNally, Salford Van Hire’s contracts and fleet engineering director.

“We looked at a series of options, including the trailer fleet, which was fairly new, so it wasn’t practical to change the refrigeration units themselves. Also, if your starting point is the tractor unit, then it’s quite difficult to make significant changes, particularly with newer vehicles, so we needed to consider alternatives.”

The system is fitted to the tractor unit and runs off the engine’s power take-off generating 400 volts and connects to the fridge motor via a five-pin plug.

“Environmental ‘best-practice’ has for many years formed an integral part of the Danish Crown business,” Danish Crown site director, Mark Simmons said.

“In addition to the fuel savings we expect to make - over 85% less expenditure on fridge diesel - we will also be slashing our CO2 emissions: given that every litre of diesel burned, produces 2.65kgs of carbon and our fridges will now run mostly on electricity from the Ecogen systems, we will be reducing emissions by around 50 tonnes every year.”

“The Ecogens represented a simple way to reduce CO2, because we could fit them to the company’s current trailer pool. The big benefit, compared with a lot of other electric options, is that it doesn’t matter what trailer you pull. There’s no issue with matching up at all, and it will work with most late model fridge units with a simple adjustment,” Simmons added.

Danish Crown’s entire articulated fleet has been equipped with Hultsteins’ Ecogen units since early May.