CO3

CO³ – Collaboration Concepts for Co-modality

The EU-funded project ‘COllaboration COncepts for CO-modality’, in short ‘CO³’, is a project that aims to develop, professionalize and disseminate information on the business strategy of logistics collaboration in Europe. The goal of the project is to deliver a concrete contribution to increasing load factors, reducing empty movements and stimulate co-modality, through collaboration between industry partners, thereby reducing transport externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions and costs.

European statistics show that, on average, vehicles carry just 57% of their weight capacity, and 27% of vehicles runEuropean statistics show that, on average, vehicles carry just 57% of their weight capacity, and 27% of vehicles run empty.
Although products are often volume constrained and the weight-utilization factor can be a little misleading, collaboration between companies would enable the improvement of capacity utilization and reduce empty running, which would not only make transport more cost efficient, but would also reduce environmental impact.
In addition, horizontal collaboration could create possibilities for multimodal transport. However, collaboration between companies within the dedicated freight sector has been limited.

CO³ will coordinate studies and expert group exchanges and build on existing methodologies to develop legal and operational frameworks for collaboration via freight flow bundling in Europe.
Furthermore, the project consortium of knowledge institutes and industry partners will come up with joint business models for logistics collaboration.
The developed tools, technologies and business models will be applied and validated in the market via case studies.
Finally, the CO³ consortium will promote and facilitate matchmaking and knowledge-sharing through conferences and practical workshops to transfer knowledge and increase the market acceptance of collaboration.