“Receive it tomorrow at your home with just one click”. We have become accustomed to claims like this appearing several times a day on the screens of our electronic devices, and to letting ourselves be seduced by the immediacy of those purchases. A trend that contradicts the increasingly growing environmental awareness that we claim to have in the Western world.

Solving this complicated equation is the toughest challenge logistics companies face in today’s world. This is recognized by Daniel Carrera, president for Europe of the global logistics giant UPS. “We are used to having everything already and it will be difficult to change it, but we will have to evolve in the parcel delivery formulas. It is the pending subject of the sector”, acknowledges Carrera in conversation with La Vanguardia.

UPS is one of the leading multinationals in the global logistics sector. Founded in the United States in 1907 by two people with a bicycle and 100 dollars, it has been able to adapt to the continuous changes in the world of parcels. Not only was it not swept away by Hurricane Amazon and e-commerce, but it joined it. Now it is one of the few companies that cover all the services necessary for any package to cross the planet. In 2022, it billed more than 100,300 million dollars, with an operating profit of 13,000 million. In the first quarter of 2023, turnover fell by 6% and it expects to close the year at around 97,000 million. The drop in demand due to inflation and weakness in China are behind it. Despite this, Carrera is clear that “although this year is weaker, the sector’s trend is to continue growing and to do so in an increasingly sustainable way.”

The company has set itself the challenge of reducing emissions by 50% before 2035. They are already investing in new electric vehicles and in the development of alternative fuels such as hydrogen or SAF for their planes, explains Carrera. But beyond that “we want to improve the customer experience and offer different delivery options to combine their need with efficiency. Of course at home, but also other alternatives. The gas station he passes by every day, the bakery on his street … ”. They do it through Access Points, access points close to customers. In Spain they have 1,500 and in Europe they exceed 35,000. They have launched in Europe UPS Premier, which prioritizes and tracks critical shipments within three meters of their location anywhere in the global UPS network.

Its effectiveness was key during the pandemic. UPS transported more than 1.5 billion vaccines in more than 110 countries, “with 99.9% punctuality.” This cold logistics (they can transport products end to end at less than 150 degrees Celsius) is another of the company’s strong points and one of its great commitments for the future. “The future of the health sector lies in innovation in biologics, pharmaceutical specialties and personalized medicine, and this is driving a significant demand for precision logistics: we can support treatments from clinical trials to the patient. No one else in the market can do it”, highlights Carrera.

To bolster that line of business, UPS last year bought the Bomi Group, an industry-leading multinational Italian healthcare logistics provider, and this year they opened new warehousing and distribution facilities in Madrid. Its cold chain reaches 37 countries such as Italy, Brazil, Colombia and Spain. In Europe they are going to double their size with openings specialized in healthcare logistics in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Germany and Poland.

In Spain, UPS’s largest investment has been the 40 million allocated to build the Barcelona logistics center, in operation since 2020.