CHEP comes to the aid of UNHCR with supply chain expertise

For the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the efficiency of its supply chain can be quite literally a matter of life and death, as it ships relief items to millions of refugees each year.

The UNHCR has therefore welcomed global supply chain leader CHEP’s agreement to volunteer its resources and expertise to evaluate the organisation’s logistics and associated costs.

UNHCR operates in 123 countries with a staff of more than 9300, providing protection and assistance to more than 46 million refugees, returnees, internally displaced and stateless people. In 2014, with an annual budget of more than US$5 billion, UNHCR dealt with approximately 51.2 million people of concern: 33.3 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and 16.7 million refugees, plus another 10 million stateless people and more than 1.2 million asylum seekers.

CHEP provided its Plant Network Optimisation (PNO) Team for the in-depth study, which is reviewing the current state of UNHCR resources to reduce the lead time required to service refugee camps. Currently CHEP’s PNO team is conducting a detailed analysis of UNHCR’s supply chain network in Africa.

UNHCR maintains a network of seven global stockpiles managed from distribution centres strategically located in Copenhagen (Denmark), Amman (Jordan), Dubai (UAE), Nairobi (Kenya), Isaka (Tanzania), Douala (Cameroon) and Accra (Ghana). If needed, UNHCR can ship core relief items (CRIs) from these stockpiles to assist up to 600,000 people within 72 hours.

CHEP Senior Vice President for Supply Chain Carmelo Alonso Bernaola said the UNCHR project is unique compared to other projects undertaken by CHEP, as the study involves multicountry, air, sea and road transportation and multiple data sources — factors which greatly increase the scale and complexity of the study.

The study will be completed by late 2015, with findings and recommendations presented to UNHCR shortly afterwards.