Amazon’s Belfast hub to house a fleet of e-cargo bikes
Amazon has opened its first micromobility hub in Northern Ireland at its delivery station in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. The hub now houses a fleet of electric cargo bikes which will deliver thousands of packages per week to Amazon customers, taking delivery vans off city centre roads, and helping to improve air quality and alleviate congestion.
Belfast joins more than 40 cities in the UK and across Europe which have Amazon micromobility hubs facilitating electric cargo bike and on-foot deliveries, part of a £300 million investment to electrify and decarbonise Amazon’s UK transportation network, electric cargo bikes and walkers are now expected to make millions of deliveries to Amazon customers across the UK every year.
“Our new electric cargo bikes are part of Amazon’s commitment to reach net zero carbon across our operations by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. This is a proud moment for our team, and great news for customers across the city who will benefit from zero emissions deliveries to their door,” said Jim Press, Senior Delivery Station Manager at Amazon in Belfast.
Amazon is working with Astral Fox, a local company which provides delivery services to Amazon customers. Nick Turkington, owner of Astral Fox added, “We are delighted to work with Amazon to bring this fleet of electric cargo bikes to Northern Ireland. We think the electric cargo bikes are going to be a big hit with customers, while also supporting Amazon’s sustainability commitments. The future is here and this is just the beginning.”
Amazon and its partners already have more than 1,000 electric delivery vans deployed across the UK and Ireland, in addition to nine fully electric heavy goods vehicles, the first in Amazon’s fleet, which have replaced traditional lorries.
Amazon is the co-founder of and the first signatory to The Climate Pledge, a commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040. With nearly 500 signatories, including more than 100 from the UK alone, the Pledge signatories are working together on initiatives to preserve the natural world and invest in decarbonising technologies.
As the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy globally and in the UK, Amazon has 29 operational on-site solar projects and have enabled seven large-scale offsite renewable energy projects, with a capacity of more than 900MW in the UK. Once all projects are operational, they are expected to generate enough energy to power the equivalent of more than one million UK homes annually. These include corporate purchase power agreements with; a wind farm in Ballykeel, Co Antrim, which opened last year; Moray West Offshore Windfarm in Scotland; and East Anglia THREE offshore windfarm in Suffolk.
