Everyone at Holywell Press strives to make our design and printing business more sustainable. We participate in the Woodland Trust’s Carbon Capture scheme and have introduced other measures to reduce the company’s carbon footprint. This month we’ve taken the bold step to buy our first fully electric van. The new EV is due to arrive before the year's end so we can hit the ground running with all-electric deliveries from 3rd January 2023.

oxford's new zero emission zone

In February 2022, Oxford County Council and Oxford City Council launched a pilot Zero Emission Zone (ZEZ) in Oxford to improve air quality, cut carbon emissions, and move towards zero-emission travel in the city. Currently, including just a handful of city centre streets, the ZEZ area is due to be expanded during 2023, subject to further public consultation.

green delivery

At present, we use bicycles to deliver small orders to customers in and around Oxford. This is by far the easiest and ‘greenest’ way to navigate the city. But there’s a limit to what is safe and practical to transport by bike. When we have a large load, such as boxes of books or brochures, we have to default to van delivery. But while our small diesel van was a reliable workhorse, it wasn’t a very environmentally friendly option.

Holywell Press’s transition to an all-electric fleet has been somewhat delayed by the limited payload of most small electric vans. Paper products are innately dense and heavy, so we’ve had to strike a balance between affordability and practicality. We also wanted to make sure the van’s range can cover client deliveries from the south coast to the midlands and stretch the length of the M4 and M40 corridors into central London.

The Maxus E Deliver 3 gives us what we need and is a further tick in the box for our plan to operate more sustainably.

If you’d like to discuss sustainable printing, and how we can help you adopt a greener approach to your printed communications, call us on 01865 242098 or contact us using the button below.