Klaipėda FEZ and its partners joined ADMIRAL – a pilot project for more sustainable logistics

The Admiral initiative, which brings together 21 partners from 9 EU countries, was officially launched in Espoo, Finland, in May, with the aim of creating a next-generation logistics service platform within 3 years to help reduce the environmental impact of the sector. The project’s Lithuanian partners include the Klaipėda FEZ Management Company.

According to the Admiral team, transport and logistics companies have so far been mainly concerned about their own pollution and energy consumption, but for this reason, less attention has been paid to the indirect environmental impact of the logistics sector. This is precisely the problem that the Admiral initiative will address by developing and promoting sustainable, multimodal, data-driven logistics solutions.

Admiral will focus on a next-generation marketplace platform to manage all supply chains and monitor the environmental impact of each link. The platform will aim to make multimodal logistics chains run more smoothly, make better use of existing capabilities and infrastructure, promote sustainable sourcing and other innovations. At the same time, the Admiral platform will aim to become an innovation hub for software developers who could create and teest new services. Admiral is expected to deliver not only a 20% reduction in the environmental impact of the logistics sector, but also to bring more transparency and resilience to the market.

The Admiral project members in Lithuania will be primarily responsible for generating digital documents and signatures between the different members of the logistics network. The Lithuanian part of the Admiral consortium will also take care of data integration and information dissemination in the logistics sector, and will develop solutions for the automatic calculation and distribution of CO2 footprints.

According to Darius Butvydas, Klaipėda FEZ Client Project Manager, although the transport and logistics sector is digitising, innovation in this business is rather slow and fragmented, the tools used by companies usually do not communicate with each other well, and there is almost no CO2 emissions calculation. The Admiral platform will seek to address all this.

“Klaipėda FEZ is participating in the project as a transport hub, i.e. we will provide our partners with our existing infrastructure (transport monitoring devices, 5G internet, etc.), while the other partner in the project, the logistics company CargoGO, will be testing digital tools in real time. Our data will be used to evaluate the improvements achieved. The pilot project is planned to be up and running within 36 months,” comments Butvydas.

The real outcome of the Admiral project, he says, will be a Europe-wide service ordering platform focused on transport and logistics efficiency and the calculation, assessment and mitigation of environmental impacts. The project will not only provide the ability to measure and understand the CO2 footprint across the entire service chain, but also to actually reduce it.

Admiral’s other project partner in Lithuania, UAB cargoGO Logistics, will provide the project with data and expertise, test solutions, optimise routes, improve driving styles and digitise processes. According to the company’s IT project manager, Lauras Pranckevičius, cargoGO is already testing a separate CO2 emissions calculation and reporting tools, which will enable it to offer customers the least polluting routes and services.

“We could offer customers the most sustainable, environmentally friendly route, with significantly lower CO2 emissions, contributing to a more sustainable future. The project would provide the logistics sector with a system that saves costs, avoids downtime and empty kilometres, and provides a sustainable service. The Admiral project as a whole will contribute to the interoperability of the different logistics chains, thus improving the communication between customer and carrier, to measure and calculate CO2 emissions, and to develop the organisations’ approach to sustainability,” comments Pranckevičius.

A total of 21 organisations from 9 EU countries are participating in the Admiral project. In addition to the Klaipėda FEZ Management Company, the Lithuanian Transport Innovation Association, UAB Cargo Sign, UAB Normalis Tech, CargoGO Group and UAB Trevio have joined the project in Lithuania. The project also includes representatives from business, academia and the public sector from Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia and Finland. Admiral is funded by the European Union.
For more information on the Admiral project, visit the European Commission’s website and follow its progress on Linkedin.