DHL Express signs 7.2m litres SAF offtake agreement with Japan’s Cosmo

Global cargo giant DHL Express announced an agreement with Japanese oil marketing company Cosmo to purchase 7.2m litres of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for use in its regular cargo shipping services starting in April 2025, marking the first such initiative for the international express industry in Asia.

“We are pleased that, through our agreement with Cosmo Oil Marketing, we will be the first international express provider in Japan to use the locally produced SAF on scheduled regular cargo flights. SAF is currently the most effective solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in air transport. Moving forward, as part of our responsibility to customers in Japan, we are committed to promoting emission-reduced shipping solutions and to contributing to the reduction of the transport sector’s environmental impact,” said Tony Khan, president and representative director, DHL Express Japan.

Under the agreement, Saffaire Sky Energy, a joint company formed by Cosmo Oil, JGC Holdings and Revo International, will supply the SAF produced at its production facility to DHL Express from 2025. The three firms announced that the construction work on the Saffaire Sky Energy sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant was completed in December last year and the site will begin trial production in January.

With this deal, DHL Express will secure a stable SAF supply and accelerate efforts to promote sustainable air cargo transport in Japan.

“We are delighted to contribute to the decarbonisation efforts of DHL Express and its customers through SAF, one of our key decarbonization products. SAF plays an essential role in the decarbonization of the aviation industry, and we are excited to be part of this important initiative.  Moving forward, we will continue to support the realization of a decarbonized society, starting with this collaboration, by promoting the use of SAF,” said Koji Moriyama, president, representative director and CEO at Cosmo Oil Marketing.

DHL Express currently accepts SAF at airports around the world including Amsterdam Schiphol (Netherlands), Stockholm Arlanda Airport (Sweden), Brussels Airport (Belgium), East Midlands Airport (UK), Los Angeles International Airport (US), Leipzig Airport (Germany), Miami International Airport (US), San Francisco International Airport (US), and Stansted Airport (UK).

The SAF fuel procured under this agreement will be delivered to Central Japan International Airport (Nagoya Airport), which will be the first airport to take SAF in Asia among more than 500 airports used in the DHL Express global network.

The SAF procured by DHL Express will be utilised under its GoGreen Plus offering that enables customers to reduce (in-set) their Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions using SAF, since 2022.

The SAF used in GoGreen Plus is procured based on some of the industry’s largest-scale contracts, such as the agreements that DHL Express has concluded with BP (UK) and Neste (Finland) in 2022, and with World Energy (US) in 2023. With Cosmo Oil Marketing Co., Ltd. in Japan now joining the SAF procurement network for DHL’s air network, an additional pioneering step of this deal is that the SAF environmental attributes will be transferred via the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification Credit Transfer System for Sustainable Aviation Fuels.