A new platform has launched this week promising to tackle empty lorries and unused warehouse space, backed by a £500k government grant.
The software company Value Chain Lab is launching the Flox platform to connect businesses requiring warehousing or transport with providers that have capacity to spare.
Businesses share what they need and the platform’s matching technology pairs them with suitable providers based on location, service, cost and environmental impact.
The firm said matching thousands of shippers and providers in real time is a computational problem no existing tools have so far been able to solve.
The equivalent of more than 600 football pitches of warehouse space are empty in the UK, while on the roads, lorries travel a quarter of their distance only partially full, according to UK government figures.
Michael Ostroumov, CEO of Value Chain Lab, said: “The waste in UK freight is hiding in plain sight. Every day, partially filled lorries drive past businesses that would gladly pay to use that empty space, but there’s no practical way for them to find each other.”
The government grant will enable Value Chain Lab to develop the platform, first by working with shippers and providers to understand their needs, before developing the AI-powered algorithms that are fast and powerful enough to make collaboration work in real time, Ostroumov said.
Flox relies on a self-learning agentic AI which will keep track of stock and replenishments, orchestrate flows, aggregate loads and allocate them to an optimised transport route.
Ostroumov believes the economics are compelling for both sides. “Businesses sourcing logistics support can compare providers on transparent pricing and book in days rather than the months a traditional broker process takes, without long-term lease commitments. Meanwhile, providers fill capacity that would otherwise sit idle or move empty.”
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