Maersk Partnership - Biofuel

Like most international retailers, we source our products from multiple markets across the world. How we transport these products from our sourcing countries to our depots impacts the amount of carbon we emit across our value chain. Climate Change Programme Senior Manager, Dan Roe, tells us one of the ways we are reducing our carbon emissions when shipping our products.

Tell us a bit about your role at Primark?

I joined Primark in 2021 and today, as Climate Change Programme Senior Manager I’m responsible for our global decarbonisation programme. When we launched our sustainability strategy Primark Cares in 2021, we set out our ambition to reduce our carbon emissions across our value chain by 50% by 2030, read more here. Together with my team, we’re focused on identifying ways to do this. This includes looking at how we ship our products, as shipping our products makes up nearly 2% of all Primark’s carbon emissions. You can read all about our Primark Cares commitments here.

How does Primark currently ship its products? What changes are you making?

We ship most of our products by ocean, which has a lower environmental impact than air transport. The average product journey across our value chain, from design to shop floor, is nine months, with the sea freight part alone taking up to 10 weeks. Shipping by sea also helps to keep our prices affordable for our customers as its more cost effective than air transport.

One of the important developments we are integrating into our business and our supply chain is with our shipping partner of six years Maersk, who are helping us evolve how we get our products from our suppliers’ factories to our depots.

Through our partnership, Maersk have started to introduce green fuel alternatives, such as Biofuel, when shipping our products.

So how does the partnership with Maersk work? And how will biofuel impact our carbon emissions?

Maersk has developed an ECO delivery product that uses green fuel alternatives instead of fossil fuels on their cargo ships, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions like carbon dioxide.

This is a really important step for Primark and our commitment to green fuel alternatives supports Maersk’s investment in future research as they continue to identify more sustainable and innovative fuel solutions for the future.

It’s an ever-changing space but we believe using green fuel alternatives has the opportunity to bring positive change to how we ship our products and support our progress to reducing our carbon emissions across our value chain by 2030.

What is Biofuel?

Biofuel is a more sustainable fuel alternative. It is manufactured from used cooking oil, recycled sustainable biomass and other waste streams that can’t be used elsewhere. All biofuel used by Maersk must be certified by a third party to ensure its credibility as a sustainable fuel. Once the fuel is certified it is blended with traditional/conventional fuel and used on Maersk shipping vessels. The biofuel product that Primark uses to power Maersk shipping vessels emits approximately 40% less GHG emissions annually than traditional fuel*.

How do we expect the partnership with Maersk to evolve – will there be more to come?

This partnership with Maersk is a major milestone for us and supports our ambition to halve our carbon emissions across our value chain by 2030. This is just the beginning, we know we need to do more and we will continue to look for opportunities to work hand-in-hand with expert partners like Maersk as we look to make even greater progress around the fuel sources we use. Biofuel is what we’re using today but we know there will be other fuel alternatives to come like green methanol or bio-methane. The future is full of possibility, and we will continue to strive for innovation and progress in this space.

What other areas of the business are we focusing on in order to reduce our carbon emissions?

Beyond shipping, we’re working to reduce our carbon footprint across other areas of our business including in our stores where we’ve introduced more energy efficient solutions like LED lightbulbs. We have also been working to support our suppliers to make improvements and we continue to build on the learnings of our energy and water efficiency pilot projects conducted in China using the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii) Clean by Design (CbD) programme. We have recruited carbon leads in Bangladesh, India and China who are working locally to drive improvements on the ground with our suppliers. We know tackling carbon emissions in our supply chain is not easy, however we are committed to seeking solutions that support a reduction of emissions and lower our impact on the planet.

* Primark uses a type of ECO Delivery Ocean product developed by Maersk in its shipping that emits approximately 40% less GHG emissions annually than traditional fuel. By procuring different types and batches of green fuel, Maersk knows exactly the GHG/CO2e emission reduction from using each fuel on a life cycle basis and can therefore calculate the overall average annual emission reduction.