As a part of the Department for Transport’s £10 million Battery Electric Truck Trial (BETT), NHS Supply Chain will be piloting use of eight electric trucks. 

NHS Supply Chain in partnership with its logistics provider Unipart Logistics is one of the key operators in the 12-month pilot project which is seeing 20 DAF LF Electric trucks using pioneering technology entering service with the NHS and local authorities.

NHS Supply Chain is commencing use of eight 19 tonne LF Electric rigids with refrigerated bodies at four locations across the country: Bury St Edmunds, Normanton, Rugby and Alfreton. It will feed back real time performance data for the zero emission vehicles.

The BETT focuses on vehicles, charging infrastructure, user training, repair and maintenance, and total-cost-of- ownership, providing operational insight across a variety of duty cycles. It is part of the Government’s wider £20 million zero emission road freight trials and is delivered using the Small Business Research Initiative, a process bringing together government challenges and ideas from business to create innovative solutions.

NHS Supply Chain’s Director of Supply Chain Chris Holmes said: “It is really exciting to be part of one of the largest and most significant deployments of zero emission heavy goods vehicles in the UK to date. Everything on our zero emission vehicles is electric, even the refrigeration units.

“Driving down our carbon emissions is one of our top priorities and this is just one of the ways we’re supporting the NHS to achieve their net zero target by 2045, which has wide ranging health benefits for us all, not least around air quality.”

The trucks have entered day-to-day operations while at the same time gathering real-time performance data; the results from which will be used in an interactive website to inform future fleet operator buying decisions and help stimulate the sale of battery electric trucks.