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Abstract. Urbanisation Is Increasing At A Rapid Pace And

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Abstract Urbanisation is increasing at a rapid pace and one of the consequences of this trend is that more people live in cities, more people demand more products, and above all, more food needs to be transported to and distributed within the cities. With the advancement of new technologies and widespread use of mobile devices in the population, more and more people prefer to shop online, not just books, electronics, or fashion products, but food products as well, in particular the groceries. In this work, we focus on this growing challenge of food distribution in the cities, from the viewpoint of this emerging channel: home deliveries of online food purchases. Especially in the UK which is the second biggest online grocery market over the …show more content…

The negative consequences are more intense, especially in urban areas. In Europe, around 75% of the population lives in urban areas and it is foreseen to increase up to 80% by 2020 (EEA, 2010). Moreover, food products are among the most frequently delivered items to retail shops in city centres. They also require special distribution conditions owing to their perishable nature and quality requirements (Gebresenbet et al. 2011). In this work, we investigate the transport of food in urban areas, and especially in the area of London to identify possibilities for: i) CO2 and emission factors such as CO, NOx and Hydro Carbons reduction, ii) better and efficient fuel consumption, iii) reduction on the operational cost for the transportation of food products, and iv) mitigation the traffic nuisance. The improvements would be arising from different logistics sharing practices; such as transport pooling and collaboration among retailers and 3PLs. The market in the grocery retail sector in the UK is very competitive with major retailers such as Tesco, ASDA, Ocado, Sainsbury’s. According to the IGD (2015), the total grocery market size in the UK was £174.5 billion in 2014 and estimated to be approximately £177.5 billion in 2015 and more than £200 billion in 2019. There is a continuous growth in the grocery market; however, the rate of growth is declining, leading to higher levels of competition among retailers.

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