The U-TURN project aims at addressing freight urban distribution, focusing on food logistics. The project will contribute to our understanding of freight distribution in urban areas, especially addressing the special requirements and needs of food transportation, and will suggest innovative collaboration practices and tools towards achieving more efficient operations from both an environmental and cost perspective. The project will analyse existing freight urban flows, identify synergies and winning logistics sharing and collaboration strategies and will assess them in three ways: through comparative analysis based on actual market data, through simulation experimentation and via pilot execution in four different countries: Germany, UK, Italy and Greece. U-TURN will further contribute to the adoption of these strategies through managerial assessment, quantifiable benefits and the provision of tools, including a "smart" transport matching tool, a collaboration platform, a simulation tool and economic assessment model.

The project aims to exploit the opportunities that currently exist for consolidation of transportation flows from food manufacturers to the various point-of-sales located in urban areas, as well as from local food producers and online retailers directly to consumers, and the high industrial interest behind this topic.