Development of model for calculation of carbon emissions during distribution of Fruits and Vegetables in- and into Norway

1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 DOI:10.18462/iir.adaptation.2024.1164 Development of model for calculation of carbon emissions during distribution of Fruits and Vegetables inand into Norway Sophie KENDLER(a)*, Erlend INDERGÅRD(a), Kristina NORNE WIDELL(a), Patrick HADAMITZKY(a) (a) SINTEF Ocean: Trondheim, 7465, Norway, *[email protected] ABSTRACT The Norwegian food market is dominated by three major retail chains, which manage their own distribution systems with the support of one main third-party import provider. Although parts of goods are transported by train, the majority relies on trucks, posing significant challenges for sustainability. Main warehouses coexist with regional ones for fruits and vegetables, leading to increased transport frequency and energy use. Transparency across supply chains is essential to optimize energy consumption, minimize food loss and waste, and lower CO₂ emissions. By improving cooling technologies, reforming transport logistics, and integrating innovative sustainability practices, Norway’s food sector can address growing cooling demands while advancing toward reduced carbon footprints. The work identifies imports and outlines a methodology for calculating transport routes. It describes the Norwegian supply chain structure, including warehouses, packing plants, and store distribution. A regional case study demonstrates route calculations and explains the process for determining transport volumes to supermarkets. Keywords: Model development, Sustainability, Supply chain, Logistics, transport routes 1 INTRODUCTION Fruits and vegetables are part of a healthy diet, which provide among others minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and fibre. Many countries have the need of imports additionally to the domestic cultivation locally to have a sufficient variety and quantity of fruits and vegetables. With different exporting countries producing a variety of goods and respective import countries having the need of different kind of fruits and vegetables, a complex food supply system emerges. Norway, being a country with cold to temperate climate as well as being one of Europe’s wettest countries, makes the cultivation of fruits and vegetables extremely difficult. The northernmost country of Europe is large, however only around 3.5% of the land was arable in 2024 (ssb.no), making it necessary to import the majority of goods from abroad. The harsh cold climate, short growing season, and geography of the Northern part of the country, with fjords, wetlands, and mountains, make cultivation difficult and lead to a big variety in agricultural practices. The most productive crop lands are located in the lowlands in south-Eastern and Mid Norway but cannot meet the national demand for fruits and vegetables (Flaten and Hisano, 2007; Lombnæs et al., 2011). Approximately 22,000 refrigerated trucks and 4,000 shipping containers are used to import total 460,000 tonnes of fruit and vegetables to Norway, about 70% of the total market. A lot of publications on life cycle assessment are found in literature, of which most put the focus on one product, and only few review the impact of multiple products at the same time. Some literature copes with fruits and vegetables consumed in Norway, but there is no comprehensive study published yet on the fruit and vegetable supply chain. Multiple publications state that transportation makes a substantial contribution to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy demand in the life cycle of fruits and vegetables (Bernatz, 2009; Bosona and Gebresenbet, 2018; Roibás et al., 2016; Svanes, n.d.; Wallgren, 2006). Depending on the product’s origin, transportation can be the main contributor to GHG emissions – for example, in the case of transport from New Zealand to Sweden – whereas for locally produced goods, it accounts for only a small proportion of total emissions (Stadig, 2001). This shows that a comprehensive assessment of the 1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 transportation as part of the fruit and vegetable supply chain is necessary. The main objective of this study is to map and give an insight into the Norwegian supply chain of fruit and vegetables. Hereby, emphasis is put on transport routes for imported fruits and vegetables and where this meets the distribution of goods from storage units within Norway including packing plants for local produced goods. The aim is to show the complexity of the Norwegian fruit and vegetable supply chain. The market situation and the unique geographical and population distribution are leading to a highly complex and interconnected system. It provides a basis for further work in subsequent publications on the calculation of GHG emissions and energy consumption of the transport of fruit and vegetables in the Norwegian market. 2 MAIN SECTION 2.1 Methodology 2.1.1 Goal and Scope In order to obtain an overview of transportation and distribution of fruits and vegetables, this article focuses on total imported and locally produced products, where the showcase was narrowed down to the six main fruit and six vegetable groups by volume in Norway limited to the five largest exporting countries for each product. The overall supply chain is broken down to four transport steps: 1) First, the transport outside Norway for the imported goods is investigated. As a starting point for the analysis, the transport routes are assumed to start in the capital city of the exporting country and end in the main warehouse in Oslo. 2) From the main warehouse in Oslo, the goods are distributed to the regional distribution warehouses. Transport routes inside Norway between the main and the regional warehouses are identified. There may be different intermediate destinations for different groups of fruit. For example, bananas are transported unripe and then require a stopover to ripen in ripening facilities in the country of destination (Roibás et al., 2016). 3) In a third step routing of the locally produced goods is investigated. The transport routes for fruit and vegetables produced in Norway are partially different from those for imported ones. Local products are mostly transported from the farmers to local cold stores or regional packing plants and will then be distributed to the regional distribution warehouses. Transport from farmers to packing plants is not included in the study. 4) Imported and local products come together in the regional distribution warehouses, several of which are spread across the country. The products are then further transported to convenience stores, disposable for the end consumer. This fourth step is to consider the transport routes between the local warehouses and the stores. Figure 1 provides a schematic overview, with the scope of this study highlighted by the green marked area. The aim of this study is to identify transport routes and focus on the above-mentioned leverage points, rather than the whole chain as done in a Life Cycle Assessment. Hereby, the goal is to gather a holistic overview of transportation routes and networks for the main imported fruit and vegetable groups both looking at international routes and domestic chains. More complexity is added for the domestic chains inside Norway, since different main market players exist, that operate their own regional warehouses, package plants and stores. That leads to different transport chains. 1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 Figure 1 Schematic overview over supply chain with the different intermediate stations from production to consumer and scope of the study. Free icons used from www.svgrepo.com 2.1.2 Data collection To gather comprehensive information on the Norwegian food system and its connected actors, this study works with a multi-faceted approach to data collection. Hereby, observational and qualitative data derived from different sources were used. When necessary, due to a lack of accessible information in literature (publications, reports, recommendations), grey literature, stakeholder engagement and primary conversation, news articles and media reports as well as unpublished information based on good networks and expertise within the field, helped extract useful information. Moreover, data on the amounts of different fruit and vegetable categories imported to Norway and the partner countries is based on the Statistics Norway (Statistisk sentralbyrå; www.ssb.no/en) online data base extracted with the available Python API. The data about the stores of Coop were extracted from their website and translated to coordinates by the geocoder of Nominatim (osm-search, 2025). The data extraction and processing were conducted with Python (Python 3.12). The calculation of the street routes is based on the software Valhalla (Stepan, 2024) with the card material of open street map (OpenStreetMap contributors, 2017). The sea routes are calculated by the python package Searoute py (Halili, 2024). The map plots were mainly created with the python basemap package of matplotlib. 2.1.3 Organisation of the distribution of fruit and vegetables in Norway Norway has mainly two main importers and distributors: Bama and COOP. They supply the products to the three main supermarket chains: COOP, Norgesgruppen and Rema 1000. COOP has their own distribution system. Bama (through Bama Dagligvare and BaRe) supplies Norgesgruppen and Rema 1000. Bama accounts for 70% of imports and COOP for 25%. Bama has contracts with the farmers organization Gartnerhallen in Norway and suppliers abroad. In addition to imports, COOP has direct contracts with farmers and local packing plants. The imported and local products are known in volume (tonnes), but the volume sold by the three supermarket chains is not known. It is necessary to first convert the volume to turnover and then convert it back to volume. This allows us to approximate the number of trucks needed to deliver fresh produce to each local supermarket. The organization of the distribution of fresh fruit and vegetables in Norway is shown in Figure 2. 1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 Figure 2 Organisation of the distribution of fresh fruit and vegetables in Norway (Bama.no, Coop.no, Rema.no, Norgesgruppen.no, Gartnerhallen.no,(Eldby, 2024, 2022)) 2.2 Results and discussion The underlying sections describe the complexity of the transporting chain of the main fruit and vegetable groups into Norway. Specific examples were picked to explain the applied methodology as well as to showcase the suggested approach for further calculations. Step 1: Main fruit and vegetable imports The main six fruit groups presented in this work are bananas, apples, melons, oranges, clementines/marines and grapes as the most imported fruits. The total consumed amounts, the imported amounts and the five biggest export countries are listed in Table 1. By mass, banana is by far the most imported fruit to Norway, followed by apples and melons. The top five exporting countries of fruits to Norway are low and middle-income countries, with Costa Rica being the main export country for bananas with over 50% of export share. Table 1 The six most consumed fruit groups in volume [tonnes] in Norway in 2023, sorted by type, total amount [tonnes], amount imported (tonnes and distribution [%]), as well as the 5 biggest export countries and their distribution [%] to the total top 5 import volume (Opplysningskontoret for Frukt Og Grønt, 2024). Type Total amount (tonnes) Amount imported (tonnes + %) 5 biggest export countries to Norway (% distribution between them) Bananas 79 178 79 178 (100%) Costa Rica (53.8%), Ecuador (33.8%), Guatemala (10.8%), Colombia (1.7%), Panama (0.3%) - (total 99.6%) Apples 46 693 38 784 (83%) Italy (56.1%), Poland (19.4%), Chile (6.7%), Austria (3.6%), New Zealand (3.5%) -(total 89.3%) Melons 33 347 33 347 (100%) Spain (69.2%), Brazil (11.3%), Costa Rica (5.9%), Italy (4.6%), Greece (3.1%) - (total 94.1%) 1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 Oranges 33 382 33 382 (100%) Spain (74.4%), South-Africa (13.2%), Egypt (6.5%), Italy (1.6%), Uruguay (1.3%) -(total 97.5%) Clementines/ Mandarins 27 018 27 018 (100%) Spain (57.0%), South-Africa (19.5%), Israel (12.2%), Marocco (6.6%), Peru (3.4%) - (total 98.6%) Grapes 24 470 24 740 (100%) Spain (27.1%), South-Africa (26.1%), Italy (12.6%), Peru (10.3%), Egypt (6.0%) -(total 82.1%) In Figure 3 are the exporting countries and the airlines to Norway for fruits displayed. Just considering the six main groups of fruits and the five biggest import countries, leads to complex network of supply chains outside Norway with 17 partner countries. In general, most export countries for the investigated fruit categories are countries outside Europe. In the case of apples, the geographically closest exporting countries are Poland, Austria and the top exporting country Italy. However, as can be seen in Table 1, Chile and New Zealand contribute together to about 10% of the 89% of imported apples into Norway. Figure 3 Airline routes of the five biggest export countries per fruit category (5 of the most consumed groups in volume) into Norway The main six vegetable groups selected are carrots, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, peppers and cabbage. The total consumed amounts, the imported amounts and the five biggest export countries are listed in Table 2 The Netherlands was the third largest exporter of vegetable products worldwide in 2022, and a significant exporter for Norway (The Observatory of Economic Complexity, 2024). Being under the top five exporting countries for all six investigated vegetable categories, the Netherlands contributes to a significant share of imported vegetables into Norway. 1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 Table 2 The six most consumed vegetable groups in volume [tonnes] in Norway in 2023, sorted by type, total amount [tonnes], amount imported (tonnes and distribution[%]), as well as the 5 biggest export countries and their distribution [%] to the total top 5 import volume (Opplysningskontoret for Frukt Og Grønt, 2024). Type Total amount (tonnes) Amount imported (tonnes + %) 5 biggest export countries to Norway (% distribution between them) Carrots 36 456 2 745 (7.5%) Italy (38.6%), Denmark (14%), France (13.6%), Netherlands (12%), Portugal (10.4%) Tomatoes 35 815 20 892 (58.3%) Spain (45%), Netherlands (22.1%), Marocco (20.9%), Belgium (4.8%), Turkey (3.7%) (total 96.5%) Onions 27 807 8 904 (32%) Netherlands (25.9%), New Zealand (23.8%), Denmark (13.7%), France (9.1%), Egypt (8.6%) (total 81.1%) Cucumbers 28 962 5 428 (18.7%) Spain (66.8%), Netherlands (31.7%), Turkey (0.9%), Marocco (0.2%), Poland (0.1%) (total 99.8%) Peppers 20 288 20 223 (99.7%) Netherlands (45.9%), Spain (42.7%), Turkey (4%), Poland (3.8%), Greece (1.4%) (total 97.8%) Cabbage 10 765 1 433 (13.3%) North-Macedonia (37.5%), Netherlands (20.5%), Hungary (15.1%), Poland (10%), Spain (9.8%) (total 93.0%) Figure 4 displays the exporting countries and the airlines to Norway with the 15 main partner countries. Apart from Denmark, which ranks among the top five exporters of carrots and onions to Norway, the Netherlands is geographically closest exporting country. Vegetables can be grown in larger quantities in more northerly regions, which means that most partner countries are in Europe, where transport distances are shorter. Figure 4 Airline routes of the five biggest export countries per vegetable category (6 most consumed groups in volume) into Norway. 1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 The real routes are now shown in Figure 5 and Table 3 using apples as an example. Apples are imported into Norway from Italy, Poland, Austria, Chile and New Zealand. In comparison of the direct airlines, the real routes can quite differ. The apples from Poland, Austria and Italy are transported thorough Europe by truck (Becker, 2022) and already account for a share of 79.1 %. Given that Chile and New Zealand have a combined share of 10 %, and given the distance between these countries and Norway, this is a significant figure for intercontinental transport. For New Zealand, the apples are transported by container ship more than 21 508 km from Wellington, New Zealand to Rotterdam, where they are then assumed to be transported by road for a further 1 607 km to bring apples to the main storage facilities in the Oslo area. Chilean apples travel 13 982 km by ship to Rotterdam, to finally destinate in Oslo. Figure 5 Comparison of the airline routes of the five main export countries vs. actual transport routes shown for apples Table 3 Transport route from the five biggest apple exporting countries to Norway, showing route points (cities), means of transport (types) and distances [km] of each stop / transport type. Source Country Target Country Route Means of transport Distances (km) Italy Norway Rome  Oslo Long Haul Truck 2 894 Poland Norway Warsaw  Oslo Long Haul Truck 1 916 Chile Norway Santiago  Puerto San Antonio  Port of Rotterdam  Oslo Long Haul Truck  Container Ship  Long Haul Truck 114.5  13 982  1 607 Austria Norway Vienna  Oslo Long Haul Truck 2 001 New Zealand Norway Wellington  Port of Wellington  Port of Rotterdam  Oslo Long Haul Truck  Container Ship  Long Haul Truck 3  21 508  1 607 2.2.1 Step 2: Drivers, market players and current market situation 63% of the total imported and produced fresh fruit and vegetables in Norway are sold in supermarkets. This grocery market is split between three different market players where Coop, Rema 1000 and Norgesgruppen have a market share of 29.2, 23.8 and 43.6 % respectively adding up to 96.6 %. The fourth player, Bunnpris holds a share of just 3.4 %, and where the distribution is done by Norgesgruppen. Norgesgruppen distributes all their gods through their partly owned distributor ASKO. Most of the distribution in REMA 1000 is done by their own REMA Distribution, but they have a cooperation also with AKSO for some regions. COOP distributes their own products between some of their regional warehouses but mostly use external distributors. 1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 Coop includes six supermarket concepts (Extra, Mega, Prix, Marked, Matkroken and Obs!) and had an operating revenue of approx. 5 billion € in 2023. Rema 1000 has one supermarket concept with a revenue of 4.5 billion €, while Norgesgruppen, the biggest grocery group, includes five concepts (KIWI, MENY, Joker, SPAR, Nærbutikken), which had a total operating revenue of approx. 8.7 billion € in 2023 (Statista, 2025). The supply chains and the connected national and regional organisation of distribution areas and centres for distribution and storage differ for each of the three big grocery groups. Further in this paper, COOP is set to be the showcase for the model development. The different regional divisions of distribution areas and respective allocations of storage and distribution centres of COOP retail group can be seen in Figure 6. With outlining the methodology for calculating the km-tonnes and further the GHG emissions for the COOP retail group, the other grocery groups can be included. Coop subdivides Norway into 58 areas for organizational purposes. The main 14 of these areas are shown in Figure 6. Since the turnover for each region and supermarket concept is known, it is possible to approximate the average volume of fruit and vegetables delivered to each supermarket. This indirectly takes into account the unique geographical and population distribution. The different distribution areas are supplied through the different regional warehouses across the organisational boarders. The regional warehouses are supplied from the main warehouse in Oslo and the rest from the various packaging plants in the vicinity. The regional warehouses for Coop are based in Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø. As shown in Figure 6 there are train connections in between but the main amounts are transported by trucks. Figure 6 Norwegian map showing the distribution areas (1-15), storage units (yellow squares for some main cities and a,b) as well as the main train routes (red for diesel locomotive and green for electrified routes) for the grocery group Coop. 2.2.2 Step 3: Regional distribution of North-West Norway: Example of the Coop grocery group Further in the COOP showcase, the region North-West (Figure 6, region 4) is used to present the model development. For further distribution from the local cold stores and packing plants to the regional warehouse in the area around Trondheim has been selected. Therefore, the packing plants in the middle part of Norway 1st IIR Conference on Refrigeration Adapting to Rising Temperatures, Manchester, England, August 2025 are shown in Figure 7 additional to the regional warehouse in Trondheim. The packing plants are mainly distinguished into packaging facilities for vegetables, potatoes and fruits with some of them packaging a combination of potatoes and vegetables. Around 12 package plants deliver to the regional warehouses of the different main market players in Trondheim including Coop. After repackaging, the products are distributed to other regional distribution centers or directly to the supermarkets. Figure 7 Transport routes from the individual packing plants in the area North-West to the regional warehouse in Trondheim. 2.2.3 Step 4: Distribution to the shops from the regional warehouse: COOP alone operates 1114 stores as part of their six different supermarket chains in Norway. The upper part of the Nort-West area, shown in Figure 6 is supplied through the regional warehouse in Trondheim, except a smaller local production around Mosjøen and Tromsø. Figure 8 shows the routes from the warehouse in Trondheim to the 66 individual stores located in this area. The lengths of the routes range from 148 km to 502 km and the mean length for all routes displayed is 284.2 km. The delivery of fresh fruit and vegetables to the supermarkets is mostly done 4 days per week throughout the country, except 3 days per week up north and 5 days per week around the Oslo area. Figure 8 Distribution of products to individual stores from Coop’s regional warehouse in Trondheim in a part of the area North-West