Berlin, 20 January 2026 — Supermarket group Kaufland and Milence announced a charging-hub partnership that puts a public, truck-dedicated fast-charging site at the doorstep of Kaufland’s Barsinghausen distribution centre near Hanover. Four 400 kW CCS bays will open at the site in Q2 2026, expandable later. Three electric trucks have run store deliveries from Barsinghausen since 2024; six more join as the hub opens, taking the electric fleet to nine and cutting roughly 700 tonnes of CO₂e per year on Kaufland’s own accounting. The hub will run on 100% certified green electricity.

Why this matters beyond nine trucks. Kaufland is the first food retailer to formalise this pattern with Milence, and the pattern is the story: a retail distribution centre — the exact profile ING credits with ~30% of Europe’s 2025 e-truck sales — upgrades from private, improvised charging (Kaufland had run two mobile units) to shared, scalable, professionally operated infrastructure at its own doorstep. The depot and the public network stop being alternatives and become layers of one system: depot charging for the nightly base load, the adjacent public hub for longer routes and peak demand.

The template to watch. Kaufland explicitly frames Barsinghausen as a pilot for other locations. If the model replicates across German retail logistics, it solves two problems at once: retailers get infrastructure without becoming charge-point operators, and CPOs get anchor demand without speculative site acquisition. That is the European, charging-side answer to the anchor-tenant question that Chinese swap corridors solved with state-coordinated fleets (see our Hurong corridor case study). Watch for copycat announcements from other retail groups — the constraint is no longer willingness but grid capacity at distribution centres.