Part Two: Sustainability & Perishable Wastage in the Air Cargo Market

Now, Part One of this series felt a bit ‘doom & gloom’ and wasn’t in our usual upbeat nature. Well, we’re back, and this time our mood is sustainable!

The good news is, there are efficient solutions out there to address the fairly alarming market & environmental issues identified in the previous article. Today, we’ll take you through some innovations AEROTUF have at our disposal to support this much needed change. 

A key metric identified in Part One was 28-30% of all food is rumoured to be lost within the supply chain itself, which equates to approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year. 

So, how can we help?

The perishable food market is a major contributor to the worrying statistics we’ve discussed, however the AeroTHERM provides an excellent solution in reducing this wastage. The AeroTHERM is a Performance Driven ULD container which is used to protect perishable goods from extreme temperature changes during transport. It provides fresher products with longer shelf life – therefore pleasing retailers, consumers and the supply chain end-to-end. This solution also enables an increased number of products to be shipped at a time, due to no requirement for thermal blankets and potential less stability in the form of wet or dry ice being used (a better ice/product ratio).

In one case study, a roll-out of 50 x AeroTHERM AKE’s will prevent around 39,500kg of single use blankets going to landfill per year too. A solution to move our industry from the linear economy (take, make, use, dispose), to the circular economy that was central to our message in Part One. 

Now we understand that some people aren’t as sustainability driven as ourselves. We understand that ‘green can be the most expensive colour’, so we also have some statistics to demonstrate how the reduction in use of thermal blankets can support this agenda:

In our case study mentioned above, the use of those 50 x AeroTHERM units also has a very positive impact on the operation that prepares perishables for shipment: 

• It takes around 20 minutes per to prepare, fit and then dispose of a single-use thermal blanket in the standard AKE that AeroTHERM replaced 
• Replacing each of these standard AKE’s with an AeroTHERM equates to 17.5 labour hours then saved per unit per year. 
• 50 x 20 mins = 16 labour hours per week saved in preparation of blankets. 
• 16 man hours x 52 weeks = 868.4 labour hours per year saved. 

Show this to your internal teams & handlers and we are sure their eyes will be opened. When you pair this with the increase of focus on companies P&L now being dedicated to sustainability & eco-friendly solutions, let’s clear the roads and move towards a greener industry together.

Other solutions to the sustainability problem? 

AeroPALLET is yet another sustainable innovation we have devised throughout the years. Using composite materials making it stronger and more durable compared to regular ULD pallets, the AeroPALLET negates the requirement for the ‘shoring’ materials that these regular solutions require. This timber ‘shoring’ material used is usually around 40kg, therefore the benefit of AeroPALLET becomes twofold. One, the lengthy preparation of these materials and use of trees is omitted from the production process. Two, the additional weight from the aircraft is omitted using less fuel per journey. Win. Win.

We would welcome any opportunity to discuss how we can collaborate and assist with your Sustainability & Perishable Wastage strategies. Even if you have suggestions of how we can improve, let’s open up these discussions and improve our industry together.

We have our last part to come – Part Three. It will focus on the technical elements of our products that we’ve alluded to in this article, this will be for the more detail driven readers!