Case Study: Improving Lives Beyond Healthcare
Customer: Merck
Merck Healthcare aims to change lives by putting patients at the center of everything they do. The company understands that every decision and contribution they make in their work impacts the lives of patients and their caregivers. Their holistic approach includes environmental stewardship.
A Shift from Air to Sea
In 2021, Merck made a major move to significantly reduce the carbon emissions associated with medicine logistics while lowering costs, improving quality scores, and maintaining supply reliability. They transitioned 80% of their medicine shipments from air to ocean freight.
The switch shrank their logistics footprint by 10,600 tons of carbon compared to 2020.
A Joint Initiative to GoGreen
As an innovative company dedicated to human progress, Merck is exploring new opportunities to minimize carbon emissions, including the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and sustainable marine fuels (SMF).
To learn about the options for utilizing sustainable fules and the ‘book & claim’ process, they launched Green Lotus, a pilot project together with DHL Global Forwarding. The two-month trial tested our GoGreen Plus service on all shipments from Europe to 25 destinations in the Asia Pacific region.
GoGreen Plus facilitated the switch from fossil to sustainable fuels and ensured the provision of independently-verified carbon reduction certificates.
Working together, we delivered 50 tons of medicines by sea and air and achieved a 65% reduction in carbon emissions (370 metric tons). Thanks to this initiative, we have yet another proof point that SAF and SMF are key to making logistics greener.