Transport

We continually seek ways to reduce our environmental footprint.

Last year, the Group introduced a common standard for transport management systems across its operations. This continues to be implemented and will enable real-time transport management systems to improve route planning and resource scheduling across different business sectors and between multiple sites. This will help to ensure increased efficiency in the utilisation of commercial vehicles.

The Group continues to focus on improving fuel consumption across its primary distribution fleet, switching fuels where viable and replacing old vehicles with more fuel efficient models.

Wolseley UK has continued to improve its transport fleet utilisation by focusing on efficient route planning to minimise delivery journeys and the number of kilometres travelled. The target set in 2005 to reduce overall kilometres travelled by eight per cent remains on track and is expected to be achieved by the end of July 2008.

Ferguson and Stock are continually evaluating and optimising all modes of transportation to manage costs and reduce miles driven by all freight carriers. The ability to measure the mileage reduction and consequent fuel savings as a result of this optimisation is currently being developed and should be fully established during 2008.

Stock is in the process of testing new technology that treats friction causing parts in engines and transmissions. First results have shown a reduction in emissions of 14 per cent and increased fuel economy of 12 per cent in the tested vehicles. It is planned to continue to test a larger sample of the fleet and if similar results are observed, consideration will be given to the introduction of this technology across the fleet.

All new cars purchased by Brossette in France and Tobler in Switzerland are low-emission vehicles. New trucks purchased by Mart in Hungary comply to the EUR04 standard as do all new trucks purchased by Manzardo in Italy.