Lufthansa Cargo drives paperless airfreight forward

With new customers in the fold and the introduction of the electronic air waybill (eAWB), Lufthansa Cargo is heading into a paperless industry environment and is well on the way to achieving its ambitious e-freight targets for 2011.

The e-freight initiative, launched by IATA in 2007, is designed to take the paper out of the air cargo supply chain entirely by 2015. The introduction of the eAWB is the next major milestone on the road toward paperless e-freight across the industry. The eAWB replaces the paper air waybill that constitutes the contract of carriage between the shipper (forwarder) and carrier, and is processed totally electronically. Besides saving tonnes of paper, it makes for faster and more cost-efficient processes for all those involved in the transport chain.

After penning the first eAWB- Electronic Data Interchange agreement with the Luxembourg logistics services provider Logwin in November 2010, Lufthansa Cargo  has gained the global forwarders - Hellmann Worldwide Logistics and Panalpina as further partners for the eFreight/eAWB initiative. 

“With Hong Kong and Singapore airports newly integrated process-wise, we have further advanced the expansion of the eAWB and successfully carried out the first  paperless test shipments in May 2011,” noted Markus Witte, Head of Technology Development at Lufthansa Cargo. “We intend to offer the electronic air waybill to customers around the world and are planning to open additional stations in the near future. This strategy is setting us well apart from other airlines, which  concentrate the eFreight/eAWB project strongly on their home market.”

Lufthansa Cargo’s e-freight network has grown steadily since IATA launched the initiative. Meantime, the carrier moves around 4,000 paperless shipments monthly at more than 120 eFreight stations, including all German airports. It is now up to second place in the IATA e-freight rankings for shipments transported internationally.