DHL Freight supports pharmaceutical company Alexion with sustainable road transport in Ireland and Europe. Around 500 transports per year to ten European countries are planned, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90 percent by switching from diesel to hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO). The new partnership confirms DHLs leadership in green logistics and Alexion's pioneering role in climate-friendly pharmaceutical transportation.
Another Milestone Towards Sustainable Road Freight Solutions
DHL Global Forwarding, Freight and Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease have been working together since 2015. Now they are deepening their collaboration with a groundbreaking signal for sustainability. The two partners are using HVO as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional diesel. This can save up to 90 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The initiative covers both national and international transport to ten European countries from the Irish Alexion sites in Dublin and Athlone. With a total of around 500 HVO-powered transports per year, the cooperation is setting new standards for sustainable pharmaceutical logistics.
This is another step in the right direction as we strive to run more sustainable operations for our customers that reduce the inherent Greenhouse emissions in transporting goods. We are delighted to see Alexion be one of the trailblazers to make this significant switch in approach and thereby follow-up on their sustainability goals with clear actions.
Maurice Meade, Managing Director DHL Global Forwarding, Freight Irland
Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease
Founded in 1992, Alexion is a global biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing life-changing therapies for people with rare disorders. Alexion's mission is to improve the lives of people with rare diseases by exploring, developing, and delivering life-changing therapies, support services, and healthcare technologies. Since 2021, Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease, has been the specialist rare disease division of AstraZeneca.
Sustainable Excellence for Lifescience & Healthcare
With the DGP certificate for pharmaceutical transports, DHL Freight is a proven and competent partner for our customers in the Life Sciences & Healthcare sector. In pharmaceutical logistics, as in other areas, we focus not only on quality and transportation safety, but also on environmental sustainability: For example, in addition to our partnership with Alexion, we are partnering with the pharmaceutical company Lilly and have established the first international biodiesel route for the road transport of medicines.
Today’s announcement with DHL to move from Diesel to HVO fuel is another milestone in our commitment to reducing our environmental impact, and dependency on fossil fuels within our global supply chain in relation to Scope 3. By working with our partners such as DHL to extend eco-conscious practices to our full freight network, we can further minimize our environmental impact and dependency on fossil fuels within our global supply chain.
Sylvia Kiely, Vice President – Global Supply Chain and Product Strategy Lead bei Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease
Innovative and Open to Technology for the Green Logistics of the Future
The partnership with Alexion once again illustrates DHL Freight's strength in developing innovative and tailor-made solutions for specific customer needs, thus making an important contribution to the decarbonization of transport and logistics. It also represents another building block in the sustainability strategy of DHL Freight and DHL Group. This strategy aims to reduce all logistics-related emissions to net zero by 2050. The use of HVO is one of the approaches to sustainable transport.
DHL Freight and DHL Group are evaluating and deploying different propulsion technologies to explore all sustainability options for road freight: e-mobility, hydrogen technology, and sustainable fuels such as HVO, Bio-LNG and Bio-CNG. To involve our customers in our net-zero emissions goal and enable them to easily and effectively reduce their own Scope 3 emissions, DHL Freight launched GoGreen Plus services in 2022.
