Arla Foods’ Aylesbury plant (Image: DLA Design)
Gasrec, European supplier of liquefied gas fuel to the transport sector, has opened a dedicated Bio-LNG (biomethane) filling station at Arla Foods’ new £150 million (USD 250 m) dairy at Aylesbury, which is set to become the UK’s first zero carbon dairy and has the capacity to process up to one billion litres of fresh milk a year.
Gasrec has a strategic partnership with Arla Foods to develop and implement a strategy to introduce low emission biomethane for its heavy goods vehicle fleet across its European operations. The initiative supports Arla’s U.K. Logistics target of a 25 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 within the areas of production, transport and packaging.
At the new Aylesbury dairy, said to be largest fresh milk processing facility in the world, Arla plans to convert its entire fleet of vehicles to dual-fuel; with the first 10 dual-fuel conversion trucks running on liquefied biomethane this month. As part of this collaboration, Gasrec will supply fuel and provide refuelling station infrastructure at the Aylesbury site matched to the number of trucks converted to use it.
Ben Sawford, Gasrec’s Chief Commercial Officer, said: “Sustainability and green issues are critical to Arla Foods and it is a pleasure to be helping such an enlightened company to develop strategies for reducing both cost and carbon emissions from their transport operations. As our network and operations expand further, I am confident many other companies will see the rewards of converting HGV fleets to bio-fuels – benefiting both the environment and their balance sheets.”
Gasrec is building the UK’s strategic gas refueling infrastructure to allow customers to refuel at multiple locations across the UK road network. The first site was opened in 2013 at the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) in Northamptonshire. The company has also secured European funding for a pilot network of a further four filling stations across the UK motorway network.
(Source: Gasrec)
