Enhancing sustainability in Volkswagen Group logistics

Train carrying cars crossing a bridge over a river.

Sustainability>Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)>Initiatives

Volkswagen Group Logistics consolidates and connects sustainable logistics activities across the Group – spanning all brands and extending to the plants. It addresses a range of action areas to continuously enhance the sustainability of logistics while ensuring that these measures are coordinated and implemented consistently with logistics service providers.

Volkswagen Group Logistics

Volkswagen Konzernlogistik GmbH & Co. OHG is responsible for managing and optimizing the Volkswagen Group's logistics chains. Based in Wolfsburg, the more than 800 employees primarily coordinate the transportation of production materials as well as the transport and distribution of new and used vehicles.

The company thus plays a central role in the Volkswagen Group's supply chain management and ensures that 200 million parts and around 43,000 vehicles are moved by ship, rail and truck every day in order to network more than 8,500 suppliers, 111 production plants and over 150 sales markets.

As the “Head Office of Logistics,” Group Logistics also performs a governance function for brand logistics by strategically and tactically shaping the cross-brand network for the optimal supply of production and retail. In addition to security of supply, the focus is on efficiency and – pursued via the goTOzero impact logistics program – sustainability.

4.8

million

vehicles transported per year

150

sales markets

180,000

TEU containers shipped per year

111

production sites

7,800

ship departures per year

Driving sustainability in logistics: our approach

Without logistics, there is no production. Just like production, logistics at the Volkswagen Group must be designed to be both efficient and sustainable in order to achieve the Company’s climate targets.

Volkswagen Group logistics is continuously working to further reduce the environmental impact of its transport solutions.

Two VW vans in front of a large cargo ship in a port.

Man in a suit standing next to a glass wall with reflection. — **Simon Motter** Head of Volkswagen Group Logistics

The decarbonization of the logistics of the Volkswagen Group is taking place in three steps:

Volkswagen Group Logistics consolidates and connects sustainable logistics approaches across the Group – across all brands and into the plants. A key focus lies on addressing climate change through decarbonization, as logistics offers significant leverage for effective impact in this area.

In addition, resource conservation plays a central role through the avoidance of packaging and optimized packaging solutions, alongside the protection of ecosystems through the reduction of harmful emissions.

Comprehensive environmental management systems are used to systematically capture and manage all environmental impacts.

1. Transport optimization – a continuous core task in logistics. The optimal utilization of containers, wagons and trucks reduces the number of transports. Digitalization will create process transparency and help to solve the task of increasing capacity utilization, avoiding empty runs and optimizing routes.

2. Network optimization in order to use the most efficient modes of transport. One example is to shift transports – especially long-distance transports – from road to rail. Combined transports intelligently join the strengths of truck and rail. This not only benefits the climate, but also relieves the roads and helps to counteract the shortage of truck drivers.

3. Use of low-emission drive technologies and alternative energy sources. Examples include the use of green electricity on the railways and electric trucks on the roads.

In the case of road and rail, it is a matter of intelligently combining both modes of transport according to their strengths. In this way, the growth in transport performance can be decoupled from its emissions, and the transport sector can make a significant, absolute contribution to reducing emissions.

The greatest lever for reducing CO₂e lies in road transport: Although road transport accounts for less than 50 percent of transport performance, it is responsible for more than half of CO₂e emissions. Sea transportation is the second-largest emitter of CO₂e with a transport performance of over 50 percent, as large quantities are transported over long distances.

The premises:
Wherever green electricity and infrastructure are available, the use of battery-electric trucks instead of fossil fuel-powered trucks is encouraged.

Where these conditions are not met, biofuels and synthetic fuels will remain an option for defossilization. As the availability of such nonfossil fuels is limited, they should be prioritized for use in maritime transport and, if necessary, in air freight. This is because there are currently fewer CO₂e-neutral alternatives for these types of transportation.

Infographic on transport, network, and energy optimization.

Target vision 2050

Our vision is a shared transport network for material and vehicle transportation with a focus on rail as a mode of transport. In the future, the sustainable network design will essentially be influenced by five parameters: minimum energy use (MJ/tkm) and emissions, economic efficiency, security of supply, range and availability of green energy carrier capacity and associated infrastructure.

Sustainability is a team effort: across the Volkswagen Group, all brands work in close partnership to advance measures that support the sustainable transformation of logistics.