05/20/2010 07:54 am

Hewlett-Packard Australia cuts its carbon footprint

Working closely with DHL Global Forwarding (DGF), Hewlett-Packard Australia (HP) has cut CO2 emissions by 41 percent. This reduction for product sourced by sea is the result of a change in transport mode from rail and road to ocean freight for a greater portion of the supply chain.

This reduction for product sourced by sea is the result of a change in transport mode from rail and road to ocean freight for a greater portion of the supply chain.
40 percent of all HP’s supplies were traditionally shipped into the port of Fremantle in Western Australia. Under this old system, ocean freight containers were transferred onto trains and trucks in the nearby Perth switching center and products were distributed by rail and road direct to HP's wholesale customers on the eastern seaboard.
During late 2007 and early 2008, DGF worked with HP IPG to move the switching center activities from Perth in Western Australia to Sydney on Australia’s southeastern coast.  Ocean freight containers were now offloaded in Sydney in lieu of Fremantle, removing the need to transport large amounts of freight overland from Perth to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

In mid-2008 DGF and HP IPG collaborated to open a Melbourne-based switching center. Containers for local wholesalers were now offloaded in Melbourne instead of Sydney. At the same time a full container load (FCL) program was established so that FCLs could be delivered directly to two of HP's largest wholesale customers in Sydney and Melbourne.
HP also optimized land freight delivery by using trucks with higher storage capacity, thus minimizing the total number of trucks required.
“We conducted a study with our worldwide office at the end of our third quarter in July 2009 and found that there has been a dramatic decrease in our environmental footprint,” said Richard Bailey, Vice President of HP IPG, South Pacific. “The new supply chain model has saved over 2,600 metric tons of CO2 emitted by HP Australia over the last year, which equates to 21.6 acres of forest preserved from deforestation or 66,666 trees grown for 10 years from seedlings.”

HP is the largest technology company in the world with a portfolio spanning printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure.

 

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