At Leon Paul, we’re continually looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Currently, around 50% of our total Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions come from aviation, which is primarily used to deliver products to customers.

While air freight is fast—an attractive feature in today’s world where immediate delivery is often expected—it is also significantly more carbon intensive. For every kilometre that a tonne of goods is transported by plane, 1.099 kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) or its equivalent is released into the atmosphere. By comparison, a van emits nearly half that (0.57 kilograms), and a cargo ship emits only 0.01 kilograms—about one hundredth of the emissions from air freight.

Clearly, there’s a huge opportunity for carbon savings if we could shift from planes to ships. But can we make this change without compromising on delivery speed and customer satisfaction?

Exploring Alternatives to Air Freight

We decided to investigate whether offering customers in the Eastern US the option of having their parcels delivered by ship—at a reduced cost and with the benefit of a lower carbon footprint—would be feasible. The logic was that, with a high proportion of our goods going to the Eastern US seaboard, and with passenger ships able to travel between England and New York in about a week, shipping smaller packages by sea could be an environmentally friendly solution.

However, we learned that this wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Our commercial director, James, explained that international maritime transport typically involves large container ships, and the timelines are far longer than a week. Here’s why: a small package would be placed in a container at the dockside, but it might take a week or more for the container to be fully loaded. The ship itself might sit at port for weeks until it’s fully loaded, and it could make several stops along the way before reaching its destination. In short, it could take months to get a package across the Atlantic, and few customers are willing to wait that long.

In contrast, while planes also use containers, they are significantly smaller and quicker to fill. Planes carry far fewer containers, allowing them to depart within hours rather than weeks. This system enables the agility that is crucial in today’s fast-paced e-commerce environment.

What Does This Mean for Our Sustainability Goals?

Our research led to two key conclusions:

1. We need to collaborate with logistics providers to explore how maritime transport could be made faster and more responsive. This could involve working with the shipping industry to identify innovative ways of reducing emissions while maintaining delivery efficiency. This is likely a medium- to long-term project, and we’ll continue to keep you updated on our progress.
2. In the short term, we need to reduce emissions from flights. One solution we are exploring is setting up a regional distribution hub in Australia, which accounts for 20% of our air freight emissions despite being a relatively small market for us. By sea freighting goods to Australia in bulk and storing them locally, we can significantly reduce the need for air transport while maintaining delivery efficiency.

This is just one step on our sustainability journey, but it’s an important one. By rethinking our approach to logistics, we hope to make meaningful reductions in our carbon footprint, and we encourage you to join us as we continue working towards a lower-carbon future for fencing equipment.