Frankfurt Several busts of the group’s founder Gottfried Schenker are on a presentation table in front of the Frankfurt headquarters of the DB freight forwarding subsidiary Schenker. They look as if they were made of marble, rich in detail, including a mustache and a nose pinch. However, the busts were not made by a sculptor in the 19th century, but by a 3D printer in the 21st century.
CEO Jochen Thewes did not invite on this autumn day to look back on the founding history of the 150-year-old company. It’s about the future, a departure into new logistics territory. The printer, protected behind glass, has also produced suburban train couplings, grippers for machine tools and air outlets for air conditioning systems.
“As the first global logistician, we are now offering spare parts delivery via 3D printing,” says Thewes, explaining the unusual menagerie. He reports that thousands of construction files have been uploaded to the cloud in the past few weeks. Later on, they want to use it to produce up to ten percent of the stocks of companies on site. “The virtual warehouse protects the environment,” says the native of East Westphalia.
The fact that Europe’s largest truck fleet operator is investing in pioneering projects that are likely to inflict sales losses on its own transport business is not the only special feature of the industry when it comes to climate protection. The Bonn-based competitor Deutsche Post DHL, the world’s number one in the freight and warehousing business, says it will invest seven billion euros in “green solutions” by 2030 – which almost corresponds to the profit of the past two financial years.
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All new buildings there must be climate-neutral, and 60 percent of all delivery vehicles will soon be powered by electricity. In addition, almost a third of the fuel for air freight is to come from sustainable production, which is expected to save a total of 29 million tons of CO2 by 2030. By 2050, the group wants to be completely climate-neutral. If the targets are not met, the board members are threatened with a cut in bonus payments.
Second biggest CO2 sinner after electricity generation
The costly efforts have a good reason. With annual emissions of four gigatonnes of CO2, logistics alone in freight transport currently produces 11.5 percent of the global greenhouse gas, as can be calculated from figures from the International Energy Agency. Only the electricity industry is even dirtier. If everything stays the same, logistics could even reach 6.7 gigatons by 2050, warns the environmental organization.
However, the globally operating forwarding companies in particular have long since started a real race to slow down CO2 emissions. On the one hand out of concern for the planet, on the other hand for commercial reasons. Because according to the will of the EU, cheap loans beckon in the event of success.
Since the beginning of 2022, extensive reporting obligations on “CO2 reduction” and “adaptation to climate change” have been in force in accordance with the Brussels taxonomy decisions. First, large companies with more than 500 employees and all companies listed on regulated markets must comply. According to a proposal for a directive that is currently being negotiated, all large companies with more than 250 employees – regardless of their capital market orientation – could soon be added.
DB Schenker has been rolling out a network of 3D printers worldwide for a few days to reduce transport and save CO2.
In Germany alone, the number of companies that have to report on their CO2 emissions and climate protection would rise to around 15,000, according to the insurance association GDV. Europe-wide it would be 50,000. In addition, from 2028, the EU Council and EU Parliament also want to oblige non-European companies that generate net sales of more than 150 million euros in the EU and have at least one subsidiary there to submit a sustainability report.
Anyone who can prove taxonomy compliance can hope for cheap money from green investment funds, for example. “A 25 percent discount is definitely possible,” expects Per Olsson, professor at the School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin. According to PwC expert Angela McClellan, green financing still only accounts for three percent of the total market. “But it is currently growing at high speed.”
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Hamburg-based shipping company Hapag-Lloyd, which ordered six ultra-large container ships with ecologically-friendly engines, was already able to do this last year. The ship operator announced that the financing had been completed in accordance with the “Green Loan Principles” set up by the London interest group Loan Market Association.
The classification society DNV GL delivered a second opinion. Hapag-Lloyd received a $417 million soft syndicated loan and an additional $472 million in beneficial lease commitments.
The same may apply to the electric aircraft Eviation Alice, which completed its maiden flight at the end of September and of which DHL has now ordered twelve units. “We hope that this qualifies us for a green investment,” CFO Melanie Kreis told Handelsblatt.
EU taxonomy creates new business model
The EU taxonomy will also become an argument when addressing customers. “Many of our customers ask us to send them the exact CO2 consumption,” reported Yvonne Bonventre, Head of Sustainability at the Bremen port operator BLG, at the end of October at the German Logistics Congress in Berlin.
In order to appear as sustainable as possible in their climate balance sheets, reporting companies pass on the environmental requirements placed on them to their own suppliers and service providers, confirm banking circles. BLG even reacted to this in its organizational structure. Your sustainability department, which was attached to the CEO ten years ago, now reports to the Chief Financial Officer.
The ingenuity of transporters and warehouse operators to provide their customers with monetary advantages in climate protection is enormous. In a test lab in Utrecht, Netherlands, stuffed with data gloves, virtual reality glasses and other gimmicks, Kuehne + Nagel board member Detlef Trefzger is standing in front of a huge screen on which a map of the world is being built up.
Each of the hundreds of points on it marks a container ship, which, with a click, not only reveals the freight rate of each of its containers, but also the exact CO2 consumption. “This means that each of our customers can decide for themselves how much the CO2 reduction is worth to them,” says Trefzger.
In order to give the system, which was launched as “Seaexplorer”, worldwide recognition, Kuehne + Nagel secured the naming rights to the high-tech boat of the prominent single-handed circumnavigator Boris Herrmann, who is also personally committed to climate protection. PR is necessary, the competition is by no means idle.
It was only at the end of September that DB Schenker board member Thorsten Meincke presented the “International Supply Chain” online platform, enhanced with artificial intelligence and big data, in Frankfurt, in which precise consumption and emission data is stored for every container ship. “We can go down to item level for our customers,” the manager explained, clicking on one of the cargo ships to prove it. It had therefore loaded nylon stretch pants size 42 for a Norwegian retailer in a container.
500 euros surcharge on the container
At the same time, Meincke is trying to convince its customers to buy biofuel. His argument: With the climate-neutral fuel, you can relieve your CO2 balance without any detours. Together with Lufthansa Cargo, the freight forwarder has been offering regular freight flights to Shanghai for months, the kerosene of which comes almost 100 percent from used cooking fat. The first container freighters are also being refueled with bio fuel. “Five to ten percent of sea freight could be transported with it,” believes Meincke. It just costs around 500 euros more for each container from Asia to Europe.
The innovators are also working on the most polluting mode of transport, road transport by truck, which, at 111 grams of CO2 per tonne-kilometer, produces four times as much greenhouse gas as inland shipping and seven times more than rail freight.
A few days ago at the IAA Transportation in Hanover, truck supplier Schmitz Cargobull presented how fuel can be efficiently saved on the road. At the headquarters in Münsterland, company boss Andreas Schmitz had a semi-trailer designed for this purpose, the roof construction of which can be lowered at the rear in a few simple steps to form an aerodynamic teardrop shape.
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His trailers now obtain the electricity for cooling units via the rear axle – largely by recovering braking energy. At the top, diesel consumption can be reduced by almost a quarter, the company boss told the Handelsblatt.
In the end, even more CO2 savings could be achieved through the use of artificial intelligence. DB Schenker’s IT director Christa Koenen is now leaving the network planning to connect the 40 German hubs with each other. “The efficiency improves this by seven to ten percent,” she estimates. This directly benefits the CO2 reduction. Savings of the same amount are possible if the computer uses AI to calculate the optimal loading space.
When Koenen tested such an AI tool at her former employer Deutsche Bahn a few years ago, the results looked different. “Back then, experienced planning staff achieved better results than the computer,” she recalls of the first human-machine test runs. “Today they have to admit defeat to IT.”
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