Transport & Mobility

Investment in climate-friendly goods transport

As part of its innovation partnership with the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science & Technology (Empa), Migros is conducting test projects for lorries with different drive technologies and alternative fuels, such as electricity, hydrogen and Swiss biogas. In addition to assessing the practical feasibility, the tests are also intended to enable detailed analysis of energy consumption and CO₂ emissions.

In Zurich, Migros collaborated with the car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz to test the "eActros" – the first fully electric lorry to be developed directly for series production (rather than retrofitted). Migros Basel has been using its first electric lorry to transport goods from the operating centre to the branches since 2019. The measure is part of the objective to switch its entire fleet of 33 lorries to sustainable drive systems by 2030. This should reduce the CO₂ emissions of the regional lorry fleet by 80% compared with 2019.

In eastern Switzerland, tests on three gas-powered lorries are focusing on whether they can be supplied with biogas from the region, which would reduce CO₂ emissions by 82% in comparison with diesel vehicles.

In addition, Migros Geneva has been stepping up local hydrogen production on its company premises since 2019. Using an electrolyser, the electricity produced by the solar plant on the roof of the operations centre is converted to hydrogen, which can then be used to power fuel cell lorries.

In 2019, 98.6% of kilometres driven were covered by low-emission lorries that meet the strict Euro 5 or 6 emission standards, thus further reducing carbon dioxide and fine dust emissions.

Rail transport

In Cooperative Retailing, Migros remains the number one for rail freight in terms of turnover. About half of all shipments between Migros Industry companies and the national and regional Migros distribution centres are sent by rail. 

In 2019, SBB Cargo's goods wagons covered 14.2 million km in Swiss freight traffic for the Migros Group, representing an increase of 2.9% in comparison with the previous year. 

CO₂ offsetting for air transport

In 2019, Cooperative Retailing reduced the volume of goods transported by air freight by almost 10% in comparison with the previous year. Since 2018, Migros has been offsetting the CO₂ emissions from air freight in collaboration with myclimate. On the basis of an internal pricing system, a specific amount is paid into a Migros climate protection fund (my-M climate fund) for each tonne of CO₂ generated by air transport. The fund is used to initiate climate protection projects in Migros' value chain. At the end of 2019, six projects were conducted in the areas of energy-efficient heating systems, employee mobility, photovoltaics and electromobility.

Expansion of recharging network for electric cars

Migros is committed to environmentally friendly private transport and is a proponent of electromobility. By the end of 2019, customers at 75 Migros branches were able to charge their electric cars for free at a total of 180 parking spaces. With certificates of origin, the electricity used for charging can be declared as Swiss green electricity.