Nothing fishy going on here, Sanford & Sons is just doing its bit for EV championing and delivering the kai moana in a more environmentally considerate way.
The latest acquisition to the Sanford & Sons fleet just happens to be a New Zealand first, utilising an all-electric combination of chiller van and chiller unit – cutting edge technology for the “big fish’’ at Auckland Fish Markets.
Sanford & Sons is a sustainability conscious supplier of seafood to a wide range of customers and the ability to deliver the fresh, chilled seafood quickly with zero emissions falls right into the company net, so to speak.
How did it all come about? Obviously, there was a significant input from a number of players, not least of who was EECA, contributing $40,000 to the project as part of the low emission vehicles contestable fund.
This fund, says Sanford’s supply chain general manager Louise Wood, encourages innovation and investment to promote, enable and accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles. It certainly gave Sanford & Sons the encouragement to develop and deliver the chilled EV.
The van itself is supplied through LDV and is a ‘standard’ EV80 which anyone can buy. PlugnChill supplied the eutectic refrigeration, and to save you looking it up, eutectic technology is closely related to slicker packs that you might find in a chilly bin.
There is a frozen solution contained within the plates and over time, the solution melts to “release’’ the coldness into the chiller body of the van. The solution can be refrozen again and again, making it a very cost-effective alternative to ice packing.
The gradual melting is controlled by the refrigeration unit that is part of the van’s electrical plumbing and which was in this case, installed by Auckland Auto Air, who also handled the insulation of the LDV’s body.
There have been a number of spinoff advantages to the Sanford project. In addition to doing the daily deliveries, the Sanford chiller van has also contributed to making EV use more attractive to the general public.
Since the van is required to be charged every night, Sanford incorporated the installation of two charge points at Auckland Fish Markets into its project, one of which is available to the public during limited hours of operation.
Then of course, there is the assurance of ultrafresh seafood thanks to the van’s expected delivery route which sees about 150kms of travel each day.
The consideration that an EV powered vehicle be used for deliveries is not a huge leap of logic.
What’s clever about this application is that the chiller unit and the van are both electric and therefore, there are absolutely no emissions from this ‘really cool vehicle’ at all.
Sanford is not blind to the scope of the project, with CEO Volker Kuntzsch commenting at the launch “we’re making a giant leap to reduce our carbon footprint,” and with Sanford & Sons leading by example, here’s hoping a few more EV users can be found to do the same thing.
