ECTA is pleased to present you its Annual Report for 2022 while reflecting back on the Responsible Care statistics of 2021. You all might remember 2021 as a year of disruption facing the covid Pandemic challenges, the new digital ways of working together from home and all its related complexity of various restrictions imposed by national and/or international authorities.
At the start of 2022, we all assumed, we would get some relief and time to digest these post-covid challenges however the opposite came true.

In 2022, different new waves of disruptions emerged, starting with the UA crisis followed by record high, fluctuating fuel prices and inflation rates of more than 10%. Besides, the structural problem of driver shortage got worse reaching levels whereby chemical cargo could no longer be delivered on time to customers.
At the same time, the sustainability trend towards decarbonization of transport & logistics and the trend of digitalization required a continued attention. More and more customers are asking transport companies for more visibility of ETA arrivals times, a closer digital collaboration and more transparency on CO2 transport emissions.
In summary, 2022 was a year where business disruptions got the norm and where ECTA members had to collaborate closer with their customers than ever before and this to become more agile, creative and innovative to fulfill all logistics demands and without losing sight on responsible care and safety.

In this ECTA annual report, we explain the progress made in 2022 as part of the ECTA Responsible Care Program while looking back at the ECTA 2021 RC KPI’s. As sustainability remains a key focus point for the next decade, ECTA launched in 2022 its zero emissions knowledge platform where information and expertise about sustainability solutions and trends is being shared. Next, we zoom on the new ECTA driver shortage Working Group that was kicked off in 2022 and where we further explain the ECTA driver shortage positions papers and action plan. In terms of digitalization, the ECTA digitalization workgroup continued their efforts towards more common industry data definitions and issued, in 2022, two new ECTA digital best practice guidelines in the area of transport order invoicing standards and truck and driver digital data standards. In Addition, an update is given on the ECLIC community initiative whereby the electronic EFTCO Cleaning Document 2.0 project got approved and is prepared for launch mid 2023. We conclude this annual report with the update of the growing ECTA organization and ECTA members.

We very much appreciate the continued support from all our members and look forward to keeping our commitment to the goals of the European Chemical Transport Association.