McVitie’s owner Pladis UK & Ireland and pallets supplier IPP have teamed up in a bid to reduce environmental impact across the supply chain.

Pladis is working with IPP, part of Pooling Partners, to help reduce carbon emissions caused by empty trucks running on UK roads, with empty Pladis trucks being used to return or redistribute Pooling Partners’ pallets.

The collaboration is said to be working well, with an estimated reduction of almost 30,000km in unnecessary journeys and a 200 metric tonnes cut in carbon emissions.

“Empty running is one the greatest challenges in every supply chain and impacts negatively on both carbon emissions and congestion” said Alistair Leckie, transport operations controller at Pladis UK&I.

“As a business, we know that we have a responsibility to reduce our impact on the environment and that’s why we are so encouraged by our partnership with Pooling Partners.”

IPP said it shares the same philosophy, with Shelley Harris, head of commercial at IPP, adding: “We are delighted to have teamed up with Pladis to create a partnership that is already delivering tangible results for us both and for the environment. We’ve removed 28,200km of trips from the roads, which equates to saving 74.5 tonnes of carbon emissions to date.”

The news follows the announcement that Pladis hired Kerry Foods’ Lindsey Roberts in a vice-president role.