The Path to a Sustainable Future

Professor Sven Hermann, founder and managing director of logistics consulting firm ProLog Innovation, presents the second in a new series of thought-provoking articles that explore the future world of work in breakbulk and project logistics. This week, Professor Hermann looks at how turning green can benefit your company.


According to a recent project logistics survey by BHV, the port and logistics community of Bremen, sustainability does not yet seem to be a subject of competitive advantage. Only 7.4 percent of companies named it as one of the three top areas in which logistics service providers can differentiate from their competitors.

That fits in with their current strategic efforts. Only about a third of them are actively working on a long-term and holistic strategy for sustainability. And nearly the same number are arguing that the responsibility for a “green shift” in project logistics lies mostly with the industry and freight owners.

Looking at their sustainability agendas, based on the results of another survey entitled the “Next Generation Manufacturing” report by VDMA and Roland Berger, the main reason why they push the topic is external pressure to improve their ESG ratings for better access to capital market and subsidies.

But, given the following statement by Andreas Ulrich, Global Head of Logistics at SMS Group, it seems that the industry is also still at the beginning of changing something; nevertheless, they are surely aware about the possible disruptive consequences for their global supply chains.

“Sustainability matters more than ever, and this will have an enormous influence on how we will produce, where we will produce and thereby how our logistics might change a lot compared with our recent approach. But to be honest, we are still at the beginning and just recently started with our project “Green Global Logistics” and a first survey about the sustainable activities of our main logistics service providers. It will be a long, challenging but unavoidable way. And to successfully go down this path, I would say we have to shift our common mindset from the pressure of doing something to a positive and motivated interest in changing our business for the good as fast as possible. This step seems really important to me.”

Tobias Bohnhoff, co-founder and CEO of Appanion Labs, points out the following: “To make global transport chains fossil-free, we need to price in the so far externalized climate impact of carbon emissions. This is happening right now through regulation, while at the same time renewable alternatives are getting more and more competitive. It feels like first drips and drabs through a cracked dam, and in the upcoming months, these droplets will turn into a huge wave of investment that needs to be allocated effectively and data-driven – and as of today, most companies are not ready for it.”

Florian Bender, senior sales manager of Waves, underlines as well the necessary issue of gathering all relevant information and providing it in a transparent and extensive way.

From his point of view, “companies must now include sustainability KPIs in their management and financial reports in order to comply with legal requirements in the future. It is therefore more important to build up the data situation in the company in order to be constantly up to date via automatic mechanisms.”

All three experts joined our last “Foresight Breakfast” event, and the good news is, summarizing the positive expectations of them all, we will see a much greener project logistics in the next years than today. It will be connected, transparent and sustainable.

Most of the companies will have made significant progress in carbon auditing in the foreseeable future and will be able to report their emissions fully by then. This will give carriers and shippers the opportunity to reduce, optimize and compensate in a much more effective way.

Sustainable decision-making based on materiality assessments will be standard and, most important of all, management and employees will be highly motivated by themselves and not only by external pressure.

They turned green in a positive and healthy way because they finally switched to accept the necessity to change, to learn something new and seeing it as a desirable opportunity. How should a change be sustainable and holistic if we only have to? It is the mindset which will decide about our success.

So, we are coming back to the basics of foresight.

Reduced carbon intensity of all ships by 40 percent by 2030, majority of new trucks sold being electric by 2035 – only if we really want to turn green, behave as sustainable architects of our future, and this as soon as possible, then these expectations might come true and surprisingly maybe earlier than expected.

And all our experts agreed on the general recommendations for companies which are willing to initialize this organizational change and to build up employee engagement in sustainability.

(Re-)define the company’s long-term purpose, develop sustainability knowledge and competence, make sustainability visible inside and outside the organization, foster internal involvement and cocreate sustainable practices with employees together.

Professor Hermann’s next article in the series, “How to put the pieces together”, a deep dive into the future of modularization and connectivity in project logistics, will be published in April.

Images: “A.I. illustrating sustainable thoughts about the future”, based on selected statements of the last Foresight Breakfast panel in February, via Midjourney