IKEA in Canada has announced it has contracted a logistics provider to fulfill home deliveries for IKEA in a handful of Canadian cities using a fleet of 15 Lion6 heavy-duty zero-emission trucks from Lion Electric.
The Swedish home wares giant has contracted the quaintly named company, Second Closet to provide the transport and the five-tonne EV trucks Lion6 trucks will be co-branded and are scheduled to hit the road in the third quarter of this year.
Ikea says the impacts of the global pandemic have moved consumer purchases online and created an increasing demand for home deliveries and the company says it has also increased the challenge posed in terms of pollution, congestion, and noise levels in cities. In the midst of the pandemic last year, IKEA Canada completed more than 500,000 home deliveries, a 30 per cent increase on its 2019 deliveries.
“Electrifying our last-mile delivery service is an important step in our journey to become climate positive by 2030, especially with the rapid acceleration of our online business over the past year,” said Michael Ward, CEO and chief sustainability officer, at IKEA Canada.
“We are pleased to work with Second Closet and Lion Electric, two great Canadian innovators, to support us in meeting our customers with people and planet in mind.”
Second Closet is a Toronto-based start-up founded in 2017 in the self-storage business. Since then, it has pivoted to add direct-to-consumer logistics services to retailers. It offers storage, pick and pack, shipping, and last mile delivery.
“A key area of focus for Second Closet is ensuring both the quality and sustainability of our processes,” said CEO and co-founder Mark Ang.
“In addition to making this important investment in electric vehicles for our fleet, we have also retrofitted our facilities with highly energy-efficient lighting and have a circular supply chain for our corrugate boxes and other consumable materials.”
“Lion is delighted to have been chosen as a key partner in IKEA Canada’s incredibly ambitious goal of decarbonizing home delivery by 2025. We believe this will be the first deployment of all-electric delivery trucks at scale in Canada, serving as an example for what’s possible with electrified fleets today and setting up IKEA Canada and Second Closet for larger deployments in the near future,” said Marc Bedard, CEO and Founder of Lion.
In Australia Ikea currently operates a number of SEA Electric Hino based delivery trucks and T&B News understands the company is seeking to buy more for similar home delivery operations across its Australian operations
