DHL is further expanding its environmental activities in the Asia Pacific region withmulti-modal delivery services from China and a new sustainable facility in Singapore.
To ease the capacity shortage for air and ocean freight from China and reduce the environmentalimpact of its operations, DHL said it is rolling out the industry’s largest suite of multi-modalservices by its Global Forwarding and Freight divisions.
The range of services combines air, road, rail and sea transportation to move cargo from Chinato the rest of the world with companies expecting to reduce their transport costs significantly by20 to 50% and carbon emissions by up to 89%. The five multi-modal services include internationalrail, rail air, sea/river rail, sea air and cross border road freight. In addition, multi-modalservices also offer customers a far wider range of transport options compared to independent airfreight, ocean freight or road solutions that currently dominate the market.
DHL Global Forwarding said the move was timely as freight volumes from China and Asia as a wholewere leading the global air freight and ocean freight recovery. Intra-Asia trade is forecast togrow at 6.2% boosted by the increase in Chinese consumption as well as increasing intra-Asia tradewith China. Similarly, air cargo volumes between North America and China are expected to grow 8%between 2010 and 2019, and 6.8% for the same period between Western Europe and China. Themulti-modal services are expected to remain popular in view of seasonal capacity shortages that arelikely to continue in the coming two to three years.
Hermann Ude, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding and Freight said: “As the world’s leading logisticscompany, we believe multi-modal solutions will shape the future of logistics as companies look forways to reduce their carbon footprint, reduce transport cost, and especially in Asia, deal withseasonal capacity shortages. China’s ongoing investments in infrastructural development – road,rail, and world-class international flight connectivity – have opened up new possibilities forscheduled, reliable and flexible door-to-door services through the combined use of differenttransport modes.”
Kelvin Leung, CEO, North Asia Pacific, DHL Global Forwarding, commented: “With multi-modalsolutions, customers can opt to replace air freight with combinations of rail, road, sea and airtransport with different transit times, costs and levels of CO2 emissions. Compared to using airfreight alone, using multi-modal services will result in cost savings of 20 to 50% and as much as90% when replacing air freight with just international rail. In addition, switching from airfreight to a multi-modal combination of sea, air, road and rail transportation can achieve areduction in carbon emissions of as much as 89%. It all depends on which mode of transport isswitched to which.”
China’s planned high speed expressways and rail networks are scheduled for completion within thenext three years, according to Steve Huang, CEO, China, DHL Global Forwarding. This will enhanceaccess to and from the five economic regions which cover 74% of the country’s population,contribute to 90% of its GDP and account for 95% of its international trade. “Launching multi-modalsolutions enables businesses in China to further leverage the country’s investments ininfrastructure and enhance trade and connectivity to the world,” Huang concluded.
Meanwhile, in Singapore, DHL has established the S$3 million Sustainable Supply Chain Centre ofAsia Pacific (SSCCAP) to boost sustainable development in the region in cooperation with theLogistics Institute Asia Pacific (TLI – Asia Pacific) of the National University of Singapore(NUS).
Building on DHL’s global GoGreen environmental protection programme, its own sustainable supplychain expertise and its global GoGreen customer solutions, the centre will create practicalbusiness tools for the industry to establish benchmarks in areas of sustainable logisticssolutions, involving research and education.
Paul Graham, CEO, DHL Supply Chain Asia Pacific, commented: “Given the projections for supplychain logistics growth in the region, there is a need for an Asian focus on sustainability. TheSSCCAP will meet that need by leveraging DHL’s sustainability best practices at its foundation.”& amp; amp; amp; amp; lt; /p>
“As a leading logistics company, DHL sets industry standards with its group-wide GoGreen climateprotection programme which aims to improve the company’s carbon efficiency. Through high-levelresearch, surveys, conferences and forums, the centre will create new tools, best practices andknow-how that will put the region at the leading edge of innovative sustainability practices,” headded.
Besides strengthening access to grants and extending frameworks to support sustainable supplychain innovation, the mission of SSCCAP is to imbed sustainability in tertiary supply chainmanagement curriculums both in Singapore and the Asia Pacific region, DHL Supply Chain said in astatement.
