Barth+Co faced the challenge of providing customers with detailed CO2e emissions calculations for small shipments across various transport segments. The fashion logistics provider partnered with shipzero and achieved unprecedented transparency throughout the supply chain using their emissions management platform.
Barth+Co: from textile importer to fashion logistics service provider
Barth+Co began its success story in textile logistics in 1959 as a traditional freight carrier, directly importing Italian fabrics from Prato near Florence. Over the decades, the Munich-based family business has transformed into a complete provider of transport, supply chain management, warehousing, and consulting services with more than 500 employees.
Barth+Co generates over 60 percent of its revenue (approximately €150 million annually) from fashion. The company delivers textiles – from raw materials like buttons and yarn to finished clothing from many well-known fashion brands – to Germany and fashion houses across Europe. The logistics service provider relies on long-standing partnerships with haulers for road transport and handles air and sea freight predominantly from Southeast Asia, China, Vietnam, and India through its sister company alpha trans. Last-mile delivery, department store supply, and returns management are handled by the subsidiary Deutsche Textil-Logistik.
Sustainability is a central pillar of the company’s strategy: the green transformation at Barth+Co began in 2012 with the installation of LED lighting and photovoltaic systems. Electric vehicles have been used for last-mile deliveries since 2015.
In 2020, the company began cooperating with “Plant-for-the-Planet,” with plans to plant 220,000 trees within ten years. A year later, the company developed a comprehensive climate protection strategy with the goal of continuously and significantly reducing its own emissions by 2030.
Challenge: increasing requirements for professional emissions reporting
Like many logistics service providers, Barth+Co faced the challenge of establishing sustainable processes in an industry characterized by fast-paced changes and flexibility. Time-critical transports, inefficient “Garment on Hanger” transports for high-quality hanging goods, and partial loads with multiple
loading and unloading points make reducing CO2e emissions significantly more difficult.
Additionally, there were increasing customer demands for detailed and transparent reporting, which Barth+Co could only create manually and selectively due to limited resources. “The Excel-based evaluations simply no longer met the growing demand and no longer helped us with tenders,” says Managing Director Alexander Barth.
Implementation: detailed emissions calculations for small shipments across various transport segments
He therefore looked for a professional service provider who could calculate CO2e emissions much more efficiently for the many small shipments and stay up to date with regulatory requirements. When Barth began initial discussions in 2020, he came into contact with shipzero. “The timing couldn’t have been better,” Barth recalls. “shipzero’s approach sounded great – we haven’t regretted the decision to work together to this day.”
Within a few months, shipzero enabled the fashion logistics service provider to produce precise emissions calculations for its customers. After a thorough evaluation of routes, rules were implemented for modeled data to represent actual transport sections – for example, from Istanbul through several Eastern European countries to London – rather than theoretical shorter routes.
The effort has paid off: “We consistently receive positive feedback from our customers on how professional and clear the evaluations are,” emphasizes Barth. The emissions management platform enables his company to meet growing customer requirements for detailed reporting at the desired frequency and has created unprecedented transparency along the entire supply chain.
“Anyone who wants to operate in a climate-neutral way must first create a professional and data-based foundation – we have succeeded in doing this with shipzero.”
Alexander Barth, Managing Director of Barth+Co
Outlook: measuring CO2e emissions in warehouses and CCF for CSRD reporting
The managing director praises the “excellent communication” with shipzero: “We are proactively informed about innovations and receive immediate support when implementing new tools.”
And the partnership between the two companies continues to deepen: in 2025, the CO2e emissions of warehouses will also be recorded. During the year, the collection and integration of the Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) as a mandatory component for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is also planned. Barth+Co is thus intensifying its sustainability efforts even against the backdrop of the Omnibus Package proposed by the EU Commission, which is intended to simplify regulations but, according to many observers, also weakens them.
“shipzero is and remains an important partner for us in achieving our own sustainability goals,” concludes Alexander Barth. “This partnership is invaluable, particularly for integrating technologies to create transparency and optimize processes.”
