Calculating emissions for partial load shipments with network structures is complex. BTG faced this challenge and partnered with shipzero. Now BTG can send individualized reports with accurate emissions data at the shipment level at the push of a button.
BTG: customized transport and logistics solutions across all modes
BTG Internationale Spedition GmbH operates throughout Germany with more than 400 employees across twelve locations and is one of Europe’s leading “Less than truckload” (LTL) transporters as a partner in the VTL freight network. The company delivers goods multimodally through its own transshipment and storage points in conjunction with various network partners. Their service spectrum ranges from storage, order picking, and customs processing to consulting and implementation of complex projects along the supply chain.
Sustainability combined with quality management is of central importance to the company: BTG is certified according to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 and has additionally been audited according to ISO 16247-1 for its efforts toward continuously improving energy efficiency. The logistics service provider also follows the EcoVadis rating to strengthen the social, environmental, and economic performance of the supply chain.
Challenge: increasing requirements for professional emissions reporting
Like many logistics service providers, BTG faced the challenge of establishing sustainable processes in an industry characterized by cost pressure, fast pace, and flexibility. Precisely recording CO2e emissions was a central concern in the company’s sustainability efforts – not least due to increasing customer demands for detailed and transparent reporting. These demands come primarily from shippers who must precisely report their Scope 3 emissions under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
Since BTG typically doesn’t operate linear transport but works through regional hub locations of partners, the complex network structures also needed to be broken down into emissions data. For example: BTG transports LTL freight from Augsburg to Lübeck. Via their transshipment warehouse in Fulda, a partner carrier takes the goods to its own receiving hub in Bremen, where the transported products are transshipped again before final delivery to Lübeck.
Accordingly, internal data management for calculating CO2e emissions was laborious: BTG had to extract the correct data from the Transport Management System (TMS) with considerable manual effort, check it for plausibility, and based on this, create correct and standardized reports.
Implementation: detailed emissions calculations for LTL transports at shipment level
BTG sought a professional service provider who could implement precise emissions calculations in complex network structures and automatically produce GLEC-compliant reports at the shipment level. Contact between the logistics service provider and shipzero came about through quality management in 2022. shipzero’s granular approach fits well with BTG’s mindset oriented toward the highest possible quality and corresponding quality management.
At the beginning of the collaboration, shipzero was able to build on primary qualitative and activity-based information such as route profiles and vehicle types. In a first step, data was automatically integrated from BTG’s TMS and subsequently checked for correctness and plausibility. Following this, shipzero also incorporated network and partner-specific information about hubs and vehicle types from forwarding partners. This now allows accurate emissions to be calculated per transport section from the originating to the receiving forwarder.
BTG sees opportunities for more sustainable logistics in the collaboration with the emissions management platform in the future as well:
“With shipzero, we record and analyze the emission values of our transports transparently and based on data. This allows targeted measures to reduce CO2 – from optimizing transport planning to selecting more environmentally friendly logistics partners.”
Hanns-Peter Raffelt, BTG Quality Manager
Raffelt is already satisfied with the results achieved: BTG reliably and regularly sends CO2e reports to its customers at the push of a button. These reports allow customers to precisely track the complex transport structures with emissions calculations at the shipment level.
