Third-party logistics provider Second Closet is buying 15 Lion6 heavy-duty zero-emission trucks from Lion Electric. It will use them to fulfill home deliveries for IKEA in a handful of Canadian cities.
The IKEA and Second Closet co-branded five-tonne EV trucks will service last mile deliveries for the home furnishings retailer in Boucherville, Quebec, Etobicoke, Ontario, and Richmond, British Columbia. They are scheduled to hit the streets in fall 2021.
The impacts of the global pandemic are moving consumer purchases online and increasing the demand for home deliveries. It also increases the challenge this poses in terms of pollution, congestion, and noise levels in cities. In 2020, IKEA Canada completed over 500,000 home deliveries, a 30 percent increase from 2019.
“Electrifying our last-mile delivery service is an important step in our journey to become climate positive by 2030, especially with the rapid acceleration of our online business over the past year,” said Michael Ward, CEO and chief sustainability officer, at IKEA Canada.
“We are pleased to work with Second Closet and Lion Electric, two great Canadian innovators, to support us in meeting our customers with people and planet in mind.”
Second Closet is a Toronto-based start-up founded in 2017 in the self-storage business. Since then, it has pivoted to add direct-to-consumer logistics services to retailers. It offers storage, pick and pack, shipping, and last mile delivery.
“A key area of focus for Second Closet is ensuring both the quality and sustainability of our processes,” said CEO and co-founder Mark Ang.
“In addition to making this important investment in electric vehicles for our fleet, we have also retrofitted our facilities with highly energy-efficient lighting and have a circular supply chain for our corrugate boxes and other consumable materials.”
“Lion is delighted to have been chosen as a key partner in IKEA Canada’s incredibly ambitious goal of decarbonizing home delivery by 2025. We believe this will be the first deployment of all-electric delivery trucks at scale in Canada, serving as an example for what’s possible with electrified fleets today and setting up IKEA Canada and Second Closet for larger deployments in the near future,” said Marc Bedard, CEO and Founder of Lion.