Bidfood has opened a four-bay overhead charging gantry at its Slough depot, claimed to be the first of its kind at a UK commercial transport depot.
Unveiled alongside one of the new 18-tonne electric vehicles from Renault Trucks, the charging bays forms part of a strategy towards alternative fuels and its transition to incorporate more electric vehicles into its fleet.
Following support from the Government’s Depot Charging Scheme, Bidfood brought in infrastructure partner Erinion, part of the Scania group, to deliver the project earlier this year. Erinion managed the entire project, including designing and delivering the cantilevered overhead gantry, which allowed the infrastructure to be added without losing a single parking space or disrupting day-to-day operations.
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The system uses a 600kW Kempower charger to power four charging points across existing parking bays, and the gantry has been designed with future growth in mind as Bidfood’s fleet develops. The current four-charging-bay design is scalable and offers opportunities for fleet expansion.
Faye Reeve, head of non-inventory procurement at Bidcorp UK, said: “This is such an exciting move for us at Bidfood! This new overhead gantry at Slough has laid the foundations to support our longer-term transition to alternative fuels.
“We wanted a solution that works around the realities of a busy depot, without taking away valuable parking space or changing the ways our teams operate. It was extremely important for us to allow flexibility to expand the infrastructure as our needs develop.
