"Innovative schemes in freight transportation are kind of my signature"

Source tribuca.net
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At the Medef's REF, the Azurean was a symbol of a new long-term vision of the potential of a well-ordered transport system.

What did you do before returning to Nice?

I grew up in Cannes, my parents were shopkeepers in Théoule, I studied at Carnot, then Masséna, before studying agribusiness in Paris and Nancy. But setting up a company on the Côte d'Azur, with an industrial profile, was not necessarily a good idea, so I opted for Alsace, with an agri-food and import-export option, in 1978.

I then created an IT group, which was sold to Sagem in 1988. The big turning point was 20 years ago, and my association with the Lohr group, around a new concept: putting trucks on the train. I gave up everything to devote myself to what I called "optimodality"...

Of which you are the acknowledged progenitor...

Optimizing transportation from a technical, economic and environmental point of view was innovative and still is. My idea is to propose alternative modes of transport, beyond the "green" aspect. In the same spirit, with the Louis Dreyfus Armateurs group at the end of 2000, we launched the Motorways of the Sea program between the Basque coast and Nantes, and in the South, I initiated, notably with Louis Nègre and Christian Estrosi, the counterpart between Sete and Genoa, a project which still interests me. Innovative schemes in the transport of goods have a future, it is exciting, and it is a bit my signature.

And it's now trendy

There are solutions, everyone knows them, I have documented them, local politicians are interested in them, notably Louis Nègre. In order for the freeway of the sea system to be efficient, it must start as far away as possible, in order to optimize the cost of loading. To go to Italy, it should not leave from Nice or Marseille. Before Sète, the flows will not be balanced.

And then the interest is that it does not require any new infrastructure, the port of Sète already exists... The sea is different from the railway, the economic equation is quite simple. There are just ships to buy, and marketing behind it.

So why does this highway still not exist?

The main interested party is not Languedoc, it is Nice at the limit... There will always be problems, since the operation does not benefit the port of departure. I think that today, with a government that supports a rail freeway between Sete and Calais, there is a real stake in making a Genoa-Sete-Calais link, which would be added to the Sete-Istanbul link that has existed for some months. This would be a strong competitive advantage for France, on the whole Mediterranean basin, to irrigate the whole of Northern Europe. The Sète hub with its maritime and rail infrastructures is a tremendous opportunity...

There are 2,000 to 3,000 trucks passing through the Istanbul Strait every day on their way to Europe. A ship can take 200 trucks. Today, there are two ships per day to make the connection, there could be 10. From an environmental point of view, it is very interesting. It was the whole objective of the association I founded, for the development of an eco-responsible freight.

We must now move up a gear and find an economic model. While traveling by train, I met Nicole Notat (former head of the CFDT, with a strong commitment to sustainable development, editor's note). At the time, she was the head of Vigeo, an extra-financial rating agency specializing in the qualitative evaluation of companies based on social and environmental criteria. The first in the world. Enough to give me ideas...

Express route
 
Anagricultural engineer by training, Philippe Mangeard obtained a DEA in industrial management before embarking on a career focused on freight transport and logistics.
Since 1981, he has been involved in entrepreneurship by founding or co-founding several companies (Modalohr SAS, Autoroutes ferroviaires) and by getting involved through professional associations (Cercle pour l'Optimodalité en Europe, Association pour le développement du fret éco-responsable) or institutions (President of UbiFrance from 1998 to 2015).
In 2011, he founded European TK'Blue Agency Paris-Strasbourg-Nice), an extra-financial rating agency for the environmental footprint of freight transport, which he still chairs.
In 2019, he was appointed Honorary Consul of Serbia.

From TK'Blue Agency to Global Climate Initiatives

From this meeting with Nicole Notat (see above), the concept of an extra-financial rating agency adapted to... transport, of course, was born. "A fixed item for companies, which represents 1 or 2% of their turnover, and 40 to 80% of their environmental footprint..." Top start for "the private indicator of the performance of transport companies" by Philippe Mangeard, with an asserted international vocation. "A 2017 study by ADEME explains that there are less than 17% of companies that actually act, but few use serious benchmarks," he adds. And the subject is not plebiscite on the carrier side. Anyway, the Mangeard machine is launched. Carrefour, Galeries Lafayette, Castorama or Leroy Merlin, some large groups are listening and playing the game. And TK'Blue Agency became the world leader in environmental and societal measurement of transport. And there is no number 2," he says with amusement. I have created a viable model, which has attracted the best signatures in the world, and which is only waiting to explode when regulations and controls are effectively implemented." The Castex line could prove to be a good fit.

Transport? 10% of GDP, with many channels (600,000 transport companies in Europe), a complicated expertise, that Philippe Mangeard is going to switch to an online carbon footprint calculator. A new tour de force, aimed directly at companies, whatever their size, "a desacralized, expert, ergonomic process, entirely online. Far beyond the traditional assessments, often called "carbon", too little argued in the eyes of our serial creator. 14 months of development, a (very) reasonable price, and multiplied effects as long as the suppliers enter the loop. In a great wind of responsible footprints.