Sustainability assessment of food chain logistics

Abstract

Food chain logistics plays an important role in the sustainability performance of the food sector. Therefore, project SCALE (Step Change in Agri-food Logistics Ecosystems) started as a collaborative international project, aiming for tools and frameworks for the food sector to make a step change in operational practices. A sustainability framework is introduced to propose a structured and rational method for assessing sustainability. Next, we empirically apply the framework, based upon explorative web-based research and semi-structured interviews with the best practice players in the field in the Netherlands, the UK and France. Findings provide clear insights into the current state of the art regarding the use of sustainability performance indicators, companies’ sustainability strategies, supply chain redesign strategies currently applied in practice and experienced barriers to sustainability improvement. Overall, logistics service providers seem to have a wait-and-see attitude towards sustainability where food companies are more proactive following market demands for more sustainable products.

Keywords:

• food supply chains
• logistics
• sustainability
• performance indicators
• interviews

Acknowledgement

Project SCALE is partly funded by the INTERREG IVB North-West Europe, which is a financial instrument of the European Union's Cohesion Policy. It funds projects which support transnational cooperation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.