Lower and upper bounds for the two-echelon capacitated location-routing problem

► We present a new modeling framework for the 2E-CLRP that decomposes the problem into two CLRPs. ► We introduce a compact two-index formulation for the 2E-CLRP inspired from a compact formulation of the CLRP. ► We introduce the first exact algorithm for the 2E-CLRP, namely a branch-and-cut algorithm based on the new formulation with additional cuts. ► We introduce a ALNS metaheuristic that outperforms previous methods.