Resolving Social Issues through Our Business Nichirei Logistics Group
In the 1980s, a drastic structural transformation occurred in Japan’s retail industry, including the rapid rise of supermarkets and other retail chains, as the population became more concentrated in cities and car ownership increased. This brought about major changes in logistics needs, such as requirements for sorting for just-in-time delivery and stronger management of cargo freshness.
In addition, spurred by the first environmental summit held in France in 1989, noise, CO₂ emissions and traffic congestion due to trucks came to be recognized as major issues,
with strong calls to the logistics industry for greater efficiency.
The greater prevalence of retail and restaurant chains from the 1980s rapidly increased the frequency of warehouse loading, unloading, transportation and delivery. Therefore, Nichirei Logistics Group established a new logistics system using cross-docking centers for rapid sorting and delivery of products without storage. In 1993, we began full-scale commercialization of the XD business tailored to a variety of business types including general merchandise stores, supermarkets, convenience stores and restaurant chains.
Nichirei Logistics Group’s XD business delivers products to various retail stores and restaurants, mainly the three perishables—produce, meat and seafood—and chilled foods. XD centers function as relay points to enable small lot deliveries with substantially fewer routes than conventional deliveries from manufacturers and wholesalers to each store. Because fewer trucks are used, this method not only reduces logistics costs, but also contributes significantly to reducing CO₂ emissions and traffic congestion.
Today, our approximately 40 XD centers provide optimized logistics services customized to each customer 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We also handle outsourced deliveries to commercial spaces inside train stations and food floors in department stores.
In addition, delivery by category and inventory item using the minimum number of trucks has the benefit of making it easy for stores to manage personnel for tasks such as checking and stocking shelves with incoming merchandise. This enables stores to use the staff hours saved for customer service.
Nichirei Logistics Group’s XD business also operates a processing and packaging service called Process Centers. Process Centers provide rigorously temperature-controlled, one-stop services within a single XD Center ranging from processing meat, poultry and marine products to weighing, packing, packaging, labeling and delivery.
In addition to reducing workloads at stores, centralizing the processing work reduces the storage space required for inventory, thus enabling larger sales spaces.
Helping to improve customer operating efficiency and reduce CO₂ emissions through total services that include sorting, delivery and distribution processing
