The company operates in 27 countries with 337 branches,<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s really hard for us is the air and sea space,\u201d says Morrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cAir (freight) makes up around 60% of Mainfreight\u2019s emissions and probably around 1% of our volumes. Sea occupies another 10% of our total emissions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are areas we have to work with our partners on. We don\u2019t have the plans. We can lean on our partners and probe and signal but, ultimately, we\u2019re at the discretion of what they\u2018re able to do and deliver in this space.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of general sustainability ambitions, I think the biggest challenge is probably in matching those ambitions to the available technology and to what our partners, particularly in the air and sea (sectors) are able to offer and what our customers are actually willing to pay and get on board with,\u201d Morrow says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no one-size-fits-all, especially being a big international company. So finding lots of little interesting ways that we can offer customers new ways to connect to their customers is basically a kind of everyday challenge, whether it\u2019s sustainability or outside of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
And where Mainfreight does have control of emissions, for example, reduction ambitions for its own transport fleet, the technology isn\u2019t always available – or yet remotely suitable.<\/p>\n
Mainfreight is getting serious about producing its own energy as it moves towards greater electrification of its transport fleet.<\/p>\n
The company says in its FY25 sustainability report that transitioning to an electric fleet \u201cwill take time\u201d. It shows 1% of the heavy fleet is electric and 54% of the small vehicle fleet is hybrid or electric. 86% of forklifts are electric.<\/p>\n
On heavy vehicle conversion progress, Morrow says the first examples of alternative technology and equipment are emerging \u2013 on paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut these are from companies that have never made a truck before. It\u2019s the rest of the truck that we\u2019re a little unsure of. And some of the original truck manufacturers are producing EVs, but they are still very, very expensive and especially hard to get your hands on in smaller markets like New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morrow also points out that having electric trucks isn\u2019t the only way to reduce emissions in transportation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people get distracted by what they think is the only solution … if they\u2019re more open to different solutions like rail or other modal shifts like different demand and supply planning, there are more ways we can solve those decarbonisation problems than just a single solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mainfreight is cracking on with other sustainable innovations \u2013 like water conservation and recycling.<\/p>\n
The company isn\u2019t a heavy water-user but its vast roof spaces make great water catchments.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of companies don\u2019t give a lot of attention to it (water). We\u2019ve been able to do some pretty cool things with rainwater capture and storage and filtering to potable water and a lot of businesses in our space, certainly the services sector, would not give a second thought to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Digital energy management systems have been installed in major branches across New Zealand, Australia and the US.<\/p>\n
Impact reduction measures include soft plastic recycling, composting and site gardens to handle organic food waste, plastic and cardboard compacting machines at some large sites and polystyrene compression machines.<\/p>\n
The company says it has operated reverse logistics systems at sites for years to enable circularity in supply chains, facilitating the return, refurbishment and repurposing of end-of-life goods.<\/p>\n
On the social side of sustainable activities, Mainfreight in FY25 gifted more than 50,000 books to children via Books in Homes, and 400-plus scholarships have been awarded to families of staff members since 2007. Mainfreight paid $30.5 million in team bonuses in FY25.<\/p>\n
Looking to FY26, Mainfreight says it will likely achieve water collection on all owned sites, more solar power capacity, along with a further decline in carbon emission intensity factors.<\/p>\n
Fast-charging and support EV charging at all freight terminals is possible but this aim will need to be paired with greater EV uptake, it says.<\/p>\n
It is likely to achieve application of primary emission factors, carrier and aircraft specific, for international shipments.<\/p>\n
The goal for FY27 is to have EVs in all transport branches and to trial hydrogen vehicles. The aim is for international battery capacity to exceed 15,000kWh.<\/p>\n
In FY29, Mainfreight wants to achieve implementation of zero emission line haul, international solar arrays exceeding 20,000kW and its zero emissions fleet to have grown to more than 100 vehicles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The company operates in 27 countries with 337 branches, \u201cWhat\u2019s really hard for us is the air and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,95,806,138,1656,14037,17746,1667,12252,246,28828,29163,8455,48879,9978,1019,17382,90020,8599,111,139,69,4984,9999,1238,21324,21419,112],"class_list":["post-142720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-about","tag-and","tag-as","tag-business","tag-company","tag-electric","tag-electrification","tag-energy","tag-expands","tag-finance","tag-fleet","tag-generation","tag-getting","tag-greater","tag-grows","tag-international","tag-logistics","tag-mainfreight","tag-moves","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-producing","tag-renewable","tag-serious","tag-sustainable","tag-towards","tag-transport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}