How Rittal Gained Trade Lane Visibility and Turned Transport Data into a Basis for Action

Challenge: Getting transport emissions onto an auditable footing

Rittal had already been calculating group-wide CO₂ emissions since 2021; the CSRD, which took effect in 2023, raised the bar for how rigorously that accounting needed to be evidenced, including for transport. The team read likely requirements and landed on ISO 14083 as the probable reference standard well before the CSRD's own implementing rules were finalized. Initial attempts to size the problem manually – entering shipment data by hand into an existing online freight calculator – surfaced the scale of the challenge quickly. Rittal, as part of the Friedhelm Loh Group, must report transport emissions across a global network handling well over a million shipments a year.

A second requirement became clear alongside the volume problem: whatever tool Rittal chose had to produce numbers that would stand up to external auditors. That ruled out an ad hoc internal build and set a clear bar for vendor selection: certified and defensible under scrutiny.

"Handling transport emissions by hand was never really an option for us. If a tool is going to support CSRD reporting, it has to be ISO-conformed and hold up when auditors start asking questions."

Felix Göbel, Global Transport Specialist

Solution: Building a shipment-level foundation, starting with Germany's most complex network

Rittal ran its search for a provider through a structured evaluation rather than a gut call, drawing on contacts made at German logistics industry events, where other shipzero clients had already surfaced as reference points. shipzero stood out for its exclusive focus on transport emissions, rather than treating it as an add-on to a broader footprint tool or TMS. A contract was signed in September 2024, roughly nine months after the first exploratory conversation.

Implementation started with Germany, the most complex market given its domestic groupage network. SAP exports on their own proved insufficient: they carried no transport-mode information and no clean, consistent transport-segment data, so Rittal had to pull and manually reconcile several SAP data extracts before shipment data could even be sent to shipzero.

To solve this at the source, Rittal built its own internal logistics database – built on Celonis and interfaced with SAP – to harmonize shipment records (weights, sender, dispatch point, receiver) across Germany and, progressively, its international subsidiaries. The database has since taken on a life beyond the shipzero project, supporting Rittal's own volume analyses as well. On top of that foundation, Rittal and shipzero's client team jointly defined the calculation logic needed to turn raw shipment data into defensible emissions figures – rules such as reversing sender and receiver for return shipments, or using weight thresholds to infer likely transport mode where explicit mode data was missing.

The European rollout in 2025 went comparatively smoothly, since shipment data was already harmonized. Rittal is now extending the setup to non-European subsidiaries, with monthly shipment volumes having grown from roughly 40,000 rows to around 100,000. Data currently reaches shipzero via manual upload rather than API, a function of ongoing master data cleanup rather than a technical limitation; API integration remains the long-term goal.

"Getting our SAP data into shape was, honestly, the painful part. Building our own logistics database, and then working through cases like return shipments and weight thresholds together with shipzero – that's what made trustworthy, shipment-level calculation possible in the end."

Felix Göbel, Global Transport Specialist

Results: Visibility down to the trade lane, and the discipline to trust the numbers

With Germany and its European subsidiaries live, Rittal now has a shipment-level view of its logistics network that did not exist before. A world-map visualization traces individual shipments across warehouse, port, and customer touchpoints, including backhauls and hub detours – valued as much for internal communication as for analysis.

Comparing emissions by transport mode delivered an insight the team had not previously quantified: the relatively small share of shipments moved by air produces almost as much emissions as all of Rittal's sea freight combined. Air freight is used mainly to solve time pressure, and seeing its outsized emissions share in the monthly data has changed internal conversations about it. The monthly view also surfaces anomalies as they happen: for instance, tracing an emissions spike back to a subsidiary's short-notice, heavy-volume air shipments tied to a specific piece of project business.

The same visibility supports lane-level scrutiny: Rittal can now identify trade lanes served disproportionately by air where sea freight is a viable alternative and start asking why. Reasons range from stock-level policy to timing pressure, and while not every lane has an easy fix, having the pattern visible at all is new.

Rittal deliberately set a strict bar for its data clarification rate rather than accepting an easy pass. Investigating clarification cases surfaced granular data issues: a postal code merged into a city field, for instance, breaking geocoding entirely. Fixing them, especially for high-volume customers and lanes, brought the clarification rate down in meaningful steps rather than marginal ones.

"Seeing that the small share of shipments we send by air produces almost as much emissions as all our sea freight together – that was not something we had a real feel for before. It's changed how we look at individual trade lanes."

Felix Göbel, Global Transport Specialist

Outlook: From plant traffic to primary carrier data

Rittal's near-term roadmap centers on integrating primary data from its intra-company plant traffic – transports between regional sites handled by a dedicated logistics partner with telematics data on fuel consumption per trip, though not always on weight. The team is also interested in trialing Susan, shipzero's AI reporting assistant, to generate reports more quickly. The international rollout continues in parallel, extending coverage to non-European subsidiaries.

Longer term, Rittal wants primary data from its carriers to replace generic modeling assumptions – particularly for groupage (LTL) shipments and last-mile parcel deliveries, where a growing shift toward electric vehicles means that current generic assumptions do not reflect. Rittal would like to see more carriers onboarded to shipzero alongside the forwarders already integrated. The cargo owner sees a broader opportunity in standardized carrier interfaces across the industry, so that any carrier can connect to any provider without bespoke integration work each time.  

"Our goal is to get real vehicle and fuel data into the picture, starting with our own plant traffic and eventually our carriers, so we're not just assuming a standard truck for every parcel shipment anymore."

Felix Göbel, Global Transport Specialist

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