E-Freight Aims to Take the Paper Out of Air Cargo

DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight forwarder of Deutsche Post DHL, is partnering with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in its global e-freight campaign. Intended to take the paper out of air cargo, the use of e-freight will reduce the number of paper documents that DHL Global Forwarding has to handle with every air cargo shipment. Of the 30 documents required, 16 are currently being replaced by electronic messages and the number will rise to 20 by 2010.

DHL Global Forwarding handles more than a third of all international forwarder-issued e-freight shipments worldwide and has already introduced e-freight shipments in 21 countries, covering 108 airport locations. E-freight allows a shipment to be created by the manufacturer, transmitted to the freight forwarder via EDI, processed, transmitted to the air carrier, to destination operations and to customs authorities, deconsolidated and cleared for delivery in a secure electronic environment, without the need to produce a single piece of paper.

“This is a future-oriented project,” says Michael Schaecher, global head of air freight with DHL Global Forwarding. “We are fully aware that in five to six years’ time the air freight business will be very different from today, with electronic messages replacing the multiple handling of documents.” The use of e-freight, he believes, will offer advantages to DHL, its service partners, its customers and the environment.

Benefits of the initiative could include lower costs, faster service with reduced cycle times of 24 hours on average, greater reliability and accuracy due to one-time data entry at the point of origin and better visibility due to online track and trace functionality. It also could eliminate more than 7,800 tons of paper documents worldwide – the equivalent of eighty Boeing 747 freighters per year.

IATA is an international airline industry trade group based in Montreal, Canada, representing over 230 airlines comprising 93% of scheduled international air traffic.