Smart Freight Conversations
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Smart Freight Conversations
Episode 26 | The Catalyst Series: Scaling SAF – How AIR France–KLM & AIT Worldwide Logistics Are Decarbonizing Air Freight
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How can airlines and freight forwarders work together to scale sustainable aviation?
In this episode of Smart Freight Conversations: The Catalyst Series, SFC CEO Christoph Wolff speaks with Blaise Brigaud (Senior Vice President Group Sustainability, Air France–KLM) and Chelsea Lamar (Vice President Sustainability, AIT Worldwide Logistics) about how collaboration can accelerate Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) adoption through transparent partnerships, Book and Claim systems, and practical decarbonization strategies.
Key takeaways:
• Book and Claim is essential for scaling SAF adoption today
• Trust, transparency, and credible chain of custody are critical for market confidence
• Collaboration across shippers, freight forwarders, airlines, and regulators is key to accelerating sustainable air freight
From customer demand and commercial realities to regulatory barriers and market scaling, this conversation highlights what it takes to move sustainable air freight from early adoption toward mainstream implementation.
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#SustainableAviation #SAF #Decarbonization #AirFreight #SupplyChain #BookAndClaim #SmartFreightCentre #Sustainability #AirFranceKLM #AITWorldwideLogistics
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Hello, um, welcome to another episode of Smart Freight Conversations. Um, in Smart Freight Conversations, we engage in conversations about how to decarbonize logistics and uh how can we jointly move to a zero carbon logistics industry. My name is Christoph Wolf, I'm the CEO of Smart Freights Center. Um, I'll be your host today, and I'm looking forward to speaking. And we are exploring between how airlines and freight forwarders work together towards this goal. And I'm here today with uh Blaise Brigot, Senior Vice President of Group Sustainability of Airfonds KLM. Hello. And uh Chelsea Lamar, VP Sustainability at AIT Worldwide Logistics. Welcome.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02And um, just to get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your organization and how you collaborate?
SPEAKER_00So I'm Chelsea Lamar, I'm the Vice President of Global Sustainability at AIT Worldwide Logistics. I've been in this position for a little bit over two years, two and a half years. Uh, and we are a freight forwarder. So we are moving freight globally, air, ocean, and ground. Um, I think it's a very interesting place to be within the supply chain because we as a freight forwarder generally we're not selling a widget. There's not a certain, you know, like physical product, like we're selling a service. And so when we're working within sustainability, we are needing both the partnership from the shipper, from our customer who is procuring these freight services for us, as well as our carrier partners who we work with. Um, and then, you know, whoever else additionally along the supply chain, like your producers or anybody else. So collaboration is super important. That's been a lot of what we've been working on over the last couple of years. We do have our own net zero goals. We have a net zero goal for our scope one and two emissions by 2035, which for us is really our energy usage within our warehouse. And then we do own a small fleet of, well, I guess it depends on where you're standing in the industry, if it's small, but like three 350 tractors that we're working to decarbonize using HVO renewable diesel as well as electric. Um, and then we do have a scope three 2050 net zero goal, which is really aligning with our airline partners and um the ocean carriers and the the overall industry. So we're here to support, definitely here to collaborate. And we've had a really strong partner uh in Airfask LM as well.
SPEAKER_01So thanks, Chelsea. So my name is Blaise. I do represent Air France KLM, uh, one of the brought partners uh. Um so Air France KLM in a nature, it's a um global airline group. Uh we're composed of Air France, KLM, and Transavia. Uh we do operate across uh three core businesses: uh passenger uh uh air transport, cargo air freight, and uh maintenance repair and overall. So aircraft maintenance. Um my uh my role uh within Afghan SKLM would be to set the uh decarbonization strategy, uh setting targets, uh, setting objectives, making sure that we've got a plan uh supporting this, uh Afghan SLM to support the net zero transition to uh 2050. Um in terms of levers, you could think of fleet renewal, you can think of SAF. And I would say today uh one of my missions is to support the creation of low-carbon products. So products offerings incorporating SAF. And with IET, how do we collaborate? We collaborate in making sure that we have the right offerings incorporating SAF.
SPEAKER_02Excellent, very good. Part of a product is you have to sell it. So, and I think you're both in the in the market of selling products to customers, especially here. We talk about air freight customers, uh, but obviously, you know, passenger aircraft has belly freight, so it's it's it's it's it's very much together. So, how would you characterize the current situation in selling a sustainable product to the markets?
SPEAKER_01So, first and foremost, I would say uh as we operate both um passenger operations and cargo operations, I would say air freight operations, we see more demand generated by our cargo customers. So uh cargo, uh, is punching above its weight in our group when it comes to uh uh relatively compared in terms of sizes. And so that is extremely interesting to see how Airfreight is evolving. Uh, we see demand growing for uh lower carbon products. And so that to us is a sign that we should keep on offering transparent, offering easy and understandable products, and probably link them to the standard offerings we have.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I think that is right. Yeah, like I think being able to talk about a sustainability offer in the same way that we talk about a general freight offer makes a lot of sense for the customers that we serve. Um you know, from from my perspective, a lot of the work I do now, it is commercial and it is a lot of selling into uh the staff market. That's not my background at all. I'm I'm an engineer by training and I've always been like more of an executor, like project manager, that kind of thing, versus um in more of a sales role. But at AIT, it's all part of a sales role working at a service-based organization. It's like if you want to get something done, you do need to find these partners and convince them to work with you. Um from a customer demand perspective, we're also in a unique spot because our two biggest market shares are uh high tech, the hyperscalers, and pharmaceutical. And so these are both really good markets for sustainability sales, in my opinion. Uh, obviously the hyperscalers, so Google, Meta, Oracle, uh everybody, they all have their own goals related to this area. Oftentimes they have a budget. Also, their product cost is very high. Their logistics cost is very high. And so when you're talking about the, you know, like a green fee or a green adder within this group, it's a very small percentage actually of like the product value. And then it's also a small percentage of the logistics cost because we're managing their product so closely, there's so much security, there's all these other considerations. And then very similarly for pharma, and probably even better for pharma uh in terms of like a percentage of cost versus the product value, it's just a very small adder. And for a lot of what we do as AIT, it's like, you know, cancer medication, like life-saving medication that needs to be managed every second of um throughout the whole supply chain. So the logistics cost is high, the product value is high, um, the product weight is low. And so that makes like a nice combination of things to be able to sell staff. So that's been sort of my my perspective on the demand.
SPEAKER_02So you have something in common. So I'm an engineer as well. So a chemical engineer actually worked on Fisher trop synthesis many years ago. Thank you. And um, so I like this this element of segmentation, yeah, because I don't think this is actually known uh broadly. So I think your your argument is so it's easier to sell into markets where the price sensitivity may be less, yeah, and at the same time, the maybe awareness of sustainability is high. How would you see the market moving over time lately overall? So is this becoming more of a topic or less of a topic? And if you look at other, let's say heavily air freighting um industries, what's the situation there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. From my perspective, it is becoming more of a topic. And you know, I think everybody within sustainability gets this question a lot, particularly those of us who are US based with the change in administration and some of the rollback of regulations related to sustainability. I have found that our corporate customers, their sustainability goals have remained the same. Oftentimes they are doing their planning on, you know, more than a four-year cycle. So they're thinking about the future. Uh, and I do still see a lot of what we do within transportation as a bit of an emerging market. So I see a lot of potential within the customer segments that we have to do this education, start talking with them about it, pilot a little bit, bring things to scale. Um, and I definitely, yeah, sort of when I started two and a half years ago to now, I get more inquiries from our commercial teams about can you come talk to this customer related to staff, marine fuel, EVs, technology, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01Great. Yeah, and I would say Chelsea being based in Chicago, uh, and based in Paris, you know, it's uh we are an example of what works. Uh it doesn't have to be uh we we do not have necessarily to be uh in the same uh geographies, but we we do a line uh on delivering the best product. It means finding the appropriate um cost, the the appropriate pricing, and making sure that it's embedded um in what we can offer. Uh it's all about negotiating together, it's all about understanding what we want to achieve together. But I think IAT and uh and France Academy is a proof that it's uh it's feasible. We have a uh we we signed a multi-uh million agreement on the um SAF product offerings we have, and uh it's definitely a good signal. So I'm I'm uh I'm thankful uh to be with Jesse this morning as uh as a proof of that.
SPEAKER_02So so I think if you look at the uh the market statistics, so a Front Scale M has definitely been among airlines a leader at the top of the of the market when it comes to embracing self. So what makes you do that? Yeah, so why why did you uh see this? Do you see that as a priority?
SPEAKER_01You mean I think the question is what is our DNA uh at our France KLM? Look, we we uh primarily operate from France, the the country of the Paris Agreements on climate change. We also primarily operate from the Netherlands. It's it's a very interesting culture of innovation and sustainability. And so definitely when you look at sustainability, it's in our DNA. So we do have the voice of the leader, uh, it's who we are. We consistently uh ranked amongst the top users of SAF, thanks to our customers, thanks to the way we've been able to design offerings with them, and I can say, you know, B2C customers, we uh we designed to our uh um passenger business uh very interesting B2C offers on the corporate front for Airfrade, it's the same. And so I guess the the question is uh how to live up to our DNA. And the answer would be making sure that we always innovate, that we test what works with our customers, and that we uh and that we try to uh to create standards that will make the industry progress altogether.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, it's often said logistics is a team sport, yeah. So you need to work uh across the value chain, nobody can do it alone. It is so you already referred to some of the some of the uh recent work uh that you have been able to do.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02Can you tell us more about it? So maybe some of the practical aspects of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So we work very closely, our our teams, you know, between AIT and Air France KLM. So we have done uh, I think three different SAF deals now. Our very first SAF agreement was with Air France KLM. Um and I know, you know, Blaze. I also know the whole sustainability team. I know the fuel team. I know everybody at AirFrance KLM. And that's on purpose. It's because we want to know, again, with the supply chain, we want to know where the feed sucks are coming from. We want to know everything about the proof of sustainability, we want to know everything about the producer. And this is also a way for us to make sure when we are going and talking to customers about purchasing SAF, that we're able to say we have a high degree of confidence that this is an environmentally responsible way to do the fuel procurement. Uh, and that's not, and that's also something that our customers demand. Obviously, the hyperscalers pharmaceutical companies, those that are in uh the public eye a little bit related to their sustainability commitments, they need to know that the due diligence is being done, that they're purchasing a product that really is advancing sustainability that is real, you know, that's that's sort of like working towards the aims that we all have as an industry. So we work very closely together with our airline partners in order to be able to do that and have that assurance for ourselves and our customers.
SPEAKER_01You know, I'm glad to uh to to have your trust because you're saying that, you know, purchasing sustainability products, purchasing uh lower emission products, it's about trust, it's about transparency, it's about believing that your supplier is having the right DNA, uh, but also providing the right proofs. And not not dwell, you know, not diving into what makes our deal a winning deal. It's it's I can give you as an example um the constant innovation uh that we're having at Afrance KLM to serve our customers and to make sure that we do provide the uh required transparency. We uh implemented a few weeks ago a uh a SAF management system. So we signed a collaboration with uh with Choose, uh, who's going to be uh helping us professionalize, making sure we have a chain of custody that is audited, that allows real-time and transparent reporting and to the benefit of our customers. And you know, if we haven't been able to sign collaborations with IAT and others a few years ago, probably uh we would have been a little bit uh you know late in the process of making sure that we understand what needs to be done. And so, yeah, today to me is a celebration. Uh, it's uh we're progressing, professionalizing, new milestones, and uh and the future is uh looking great.
SPEAKER_02Um so I think these these deals or these examples, uh these landmark examples are important, yeah. So and I think they're important also the communication value. So people see it's it's happening. Yeah. Uh I mean there's a lot of news at how difficult it is. It comes with a lot of expert know-how, yeah. Yes, um so so we we should touch about book and claim, so carbon credits, uh complex material. So, how do you see if you want to scale this? Because at the at the end of the day, it's still at minuscule levels. Yeah, so the share of SAF is it's not mainstreamed yet, yeah. So we're still in like early adopter expert communities, and it's seen difficult. How can we scale this? So, how can we get to a 10x level?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Booking claim is critical, I think, to scaling the SAF market for or me particularly as a free forwarder, and again, with the customer segments that I have, which are the hyperscalers and the pharmaceutical companies, they do not want any impact of their operations. Like they're not gonna wait and hold, you know, medication at an airport to make sure that it's on a plane that's actually fueling with staff. Like they're for us where we don't own planes, it's not part of our infrastructure. We don't have anything to do with pipelines, we don't have anything to do with the rules of how airports do the blending before or after it reaches the airport, all of these things. For us as a freight forwarder, there's no way for us to transact on staff without leveraging book and claim. So I do think it's really important. Um, because the alternative, I think, is that people will just wait until it feels, you know, like if you know it's more possible physically, which is a long time away. Um, and I don't think that we'll be able to, you know, scale the market as is required, you know, build something better that as we want to do with just the voluntary market. But I do think there remains a lot of opportunity within the voluntary market for us to go and tap into in the near term and continue to make these incremental steps towards this future where we have staff at every every airport where we're not constrained, where we don't need book and claim. Like that is the that's the goal one day, is that it's not necessary, but today it is. And today that is what enables us to be able to procure fuel.
SPEAKER_02I think that that maybe still a few days away. So how should how can we scale?
SPEAKER_01Just on book and claim, you know, I think as Chelsea's saying, it is kind of a no-brainer for us being able to lift physical barriers is making sense. And I would dare to say, especially when you look at IET and Afrance KLM, having a multi-year expertise in handling our SAF, you know, and our chain of custody, uh we are ready. We're ready to uh to remove that uh physical barrier. Booking claim, yes, uh, as a no-brainer. And I and as a compliment, if you look at what is allowed by uh by protocols, I would say one of the uh barriers to uh self-adoption uh as a mainstream product is also the fact that it's not recognized by uh by the greenhouse as protocol. And so it's also something that uh Air France Kn and you know our partners are advocating for. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I think we all have the opportunity to work together on that. Um as you said, um, I mean, I I like your that you bluntly said it's a no-brainer. Um so there were I would say two years ago, so there was actually, I wouldn't say majority, but a lot of folks out there who are rather concerned. Yeah. So about about greenwashing. I think you talked about trust. I think these uh um I mean system aviation fuels have to have to do a lot of trust. You know, where does the feedstock come from and is it handle double claiming that and so we were we we um we work together on that. And and and I feel with the recent announcements of the greenhouse gas protocols and the science-based target initiative, so it seems it's more like a question of uh how and when rather than if yeah, so it becomes has become a technical conversation again on how to how to account for that. Is that is that in line with your observations?
SPEAKER_00Yes, it's definitely in an in line. I think that there has been more guidance recently, which is pointing us all in the right direction, and you know, we'll continue to uh provide input through Smart Freight Center or through the actual rulemaking that SBTI or GGP are doing. Um I do think it is still a barrier today because I hear from again these customers that do have higher logistics budgets that perhaps are a little bit less conscientious on the price and really focused on service. Um we get this question of is it gonna count towards our SPTI goal or like is it gonna be acceptable uh via GHGP as a concern? I think sometimes more often than just the cost. So I do think it's really important that we as an industry sort of develop the standard guidance that we can again then take to our customers and say, here is how it's all gonna work, here's how our program is in alignment with what are the rulemakers and the standards. And uh I think that would give you know additional confidence to the market. But I also see, as you mentioned, that it's definitely more accepted now than it was two years ago. So I think in the right direction.
SPEAKER_01I could not agree. Uh agree more. Yeah, agree more. I just say that uh yeah, continue. We will continue to uh to uh provide our input and show responsibility.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I think as we work together between Smart Freight Center and and your organization, so we have the chance to do this and uh towards the market as well to the regulators, to greenhouse gas protocol and SBTI. So I think we are very much involved in the technical working groups of both um um organizations. And uh so I think in earlier times there was I think the thought about okay, let's first get the SBTI and GHGP guidance checked off and then we can start working on it. And now we do actually parallel processing, yeah. So we in a way we we we we act as if it was already there, so we feed the practical experience into the technical working groups and get feedback, and hopefully by the time they get come to come to conclusion, then we are saying okay, we can we can speak. That's a theory. So we're that's a bit a theory. So we'll see if uh if we're able to to do that.
SPEAKER_01I hope so. Yeah, I think you know you're you're talking about working in sequence or working in parallel. And I would say doing sustainability is about making sure that we progress on all fronts. So of course, if you sequence your tasks, you will be slower than if you uh try to move everything in parallel. So I would say, you know, let's make bets, let's be serious, let's be responsible, but let's advance, let's progress, and let's test and learn. And you will always find A France KLMs ready to uh pilot you know, new new contracts, new new ways of thinking, new ways of doing business. Uh so we would be uh uh definitely here for our customers if they want to test things with us. Oh, excellent.
SPEAKER_02So that's very encouraging. And we talked about the regulatory constraints, SPTIG um protocol, we talked about uh the markets and the necessity to sell, but more adoption, specifically in in certain uh segments and some landmark achievements that you guys created by working together. So, what would be uh maybe the one or two if you if you could make a wish, yeah. So, to to what should happen in order to accelerate that journey, which is needed. Yeah. So, what what what would you be asking for?
SPEAKER_00I'd be asking for a lot, I guess. But I do think, yeah, sort of even more widespread acceptance of book and claim is really important. I think there's still a lot of education that's needed. Book and claim as a concept, I don't think is particularly intuitive. Like still get a lot of questions like the staff's on this plane or freight's on this plane, how does that make any sense? Um, so that sort of like kind of base level understanding, creating that would be one thing. And then the other thing would be in addition to the voluntary market, additional policy support, whether it's through incentives, mandates, whatever, however, it should look. Um, but I I do think that there is more uh structural support that's also needed to in order to create the scale that we really want.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely support is uh is key. Uh if I'm to uh to ask for something else complementarily into what she's asking for, you know, I'm I'm starting to uh to think that uh one of the barriers is that SAF is not considered as part of what should be a standard offering. And so that is one of the fights we're having. Uh we're having as a fight that SAF is a product. Um selling and having in your you know off your shelves a lower carbon product uh is part of what makes new future-proof. And so I guess also continue communicating on the fact that it's part, it should be part of you know our standard offerings and making sure that it's relevant. Uh that would be uh one of my uh I think that's in line with what he was saying.
SPEAKER_02Um obviously I I think this is, I mean, voluntary commitments are super important, yeah. And I think they vary by industry. Um making this part of a about more regulatory mandated offering is would be key. So I think the maritime sector has been working on market-based measures, yeah, a scheme, a global scheme, so hasn't come there, but maybe that there's the right timing for that. Uh and uh and maybe aviation is also a good sector for to innovate. Yeah, I see actually I I have a chance to to spend a lot of time in Asia. So I see, like in in in Singapore, I see in in China, I see in India now, actually a lot of interest, yeah. A lot of interest uh for that. Um so I'm I'm hopeful. Um, we're all hopeful. Yeah, good sign. Yeah, and uh so uh Chelsea Blaze, thank you very much for for your time, yeah, and for uh encouraging examples and uh and expectations, and looking forward to working with you on that.
SPEAKER_00Yes, thank you. Great conversation. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.