“I want to leave a positive footprint.”
Christophe Caset-Carricaburu is very clear about his goals. He created
Services Écusson Vert (SEV) in Montpellier in 2017. The company is specialized in last-mile urban logistics using environmentally friendly vehicles, with the goal of delivering packages to merchants in the city’s historical downtown, and to individuals from the logistics centers of major shipping companies, namely Chronopost, UPS, DHL, FedEx, Amazon Logistics, and more.
“From the very start, I was focused on taking a sustainable development approach. I had to find new processes to reduce street traffic and fight against greenhouse gasses,” he explains.
That’s why SEV equipped itself with a complete fleet of delivery vehicles, from electrical and
compressed natural gas powered mini-trucks to three-wheeled cargo bikes. SEV’s goal is to adapt to the volume of packages to be delivered. They have now added refrigerated vehicles to the fleet.
In an effort to limit the environmental impact of his business activity as much as possible, Christophe Caset-Carricaburu chose to only use electric and natural gas vehicles, or three wheeled bikes for smaller packages.
With this same logic, SEV is fully on-board with
the Employer Mobility Plan program launched by Montpellier Métropole, which offered the company access to facilities at the
Europa parking lot as part of its
urban logistics policy implemented to work towards better air quality and
France’s regulations for low-emission zones (ZFE – “Zones à Faibles Emissions”).
The company is seeing its first successes. SEV has welcomed important new clients such as Mondial Relay and Colisweb, and now has 62 employees and a fleet of 55 vehicles. Annual revenue is around €2.3 million.
“Our business is doubling every year,” highlights Christophe Caset-Carricaburu.
Laureate of the “
Bureau des pairs” (peer office) program, which seeks to support and guide regional companies with their strategic orientations, SEV is also committed to a number of other innovative projects.
The company is testing a prototype for EZ-Flex, a new electric utility vehicle designed by the Renault group. SEV is also experimenting as a follower for a self-driving vehicle: the TH05 Cargo droid by TwinsWheel, along
with Montpellier Métropole’s Carreta project for urban logistics.
Lastly, SEV and
Synox were awarded a call-for-projects launched by
Ademe, the French Agency for Ecological Transition, which was convinced by their
E-Logurba project.
The goal is to create a digital platform to optimize the connected property spaces in the Montpellier Métropole area (hubs, ELUs, delivery areas), while also optimizing fleets, and package flow. This solution should enable carriers to deliver packages in Montpellier using zero and low-carbon vehicles.
These goals match perfectly with those of Montpellier Métropole, whose support is appreciated by the company.
“Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole is by our side every step of the way to push our projects forward,” adds Christophe Caset-Carricaburu. In 2020, he was elected vice president of the We4log association, a transport and logistics cluster in the Occitanie region, whose missions include improving urban logistics to achieve better environmental acceptability.”
On the road towards tomorrow's
smart city.
