KN joins Airdex to offer green alternative

KUEHNE + Nagel and Airdex International, developer and manufacturer of the light-weight AIRpallet, announced the formation of a strategic alliance to investigate and find solutions for joint customers who are interested in reducing the costs and environmental impacts of airfreight transportation.

One of the largest contributing factors to high logistics costs and carbon dioxide emissions, is the usage of airfreight as a means to serve customer timing and transportation demands.

According to Reinhard Lange, chief operating officer sea & air logistics and deputy chief executive officer, K+N, said: “This alliance supports our commitment to find innovative solutions for our customers, providing for ‘lean and green’ alternatives to their transportation activities. We see these types of seemingly small solutions to have a large supply chain cost benefit and environmental benefit.”

Part of the strategic alliance will be to form a learning network with selected customers led by K+N’s Ken Nieze, senior vice-president eco air-solutions, and Dr Rod Franklin, vice-president product development and green innovation, as well as Mark Berger, vice-president of global logistics for Airdex. This learning network, which will be formed in Luxembourg as a pilot leveraging on the collaboration work done with Hewlett Packard, is to investigate the end-to-end value and environmental advantages across the supply chain using a low weight, high structured pallet for goods in the transport process.

The project foresees leveraging K+N’s network as an integrated part of a customer’s supply chain and the (re-)usage of the 3 kg light-weight hybrid plastic pallet from Airdex, which by comparison to traditional wooden pallets, offers considerable savings in terms of dead transportation weight, and thus reduces transport costs and energy requirements.

The pilot project will address the total inbound supply chain process for Hewlett Packard, from Asia to Luxembourg.

Pat Tiernan, vice-president social and environmental responsibility, HP, said: “As a technology industry environmental leader for decades, HP is focused on limiting its environmental impact from the individual employee to global operations, including our entire supply chain. Transitioning to this solution has resulted in transportation cost savings, reduced transit damage and reduction in the overall environmental impact of our business.”

Vance Seagle, founder and chief executive officer of Airdex, said: “The AIRpallet cargo safety record is a well proven cost saver combined with the elimination of aircraft cargo bay damage so common when using wooden pallets. Everyone the Airdex team is enormously proud of this new alliance with a globally recognised industry leader in K+N and we are eager to add more affiliations through our combined leadership.”

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