Halfway around the world – yet still eco-friendly?

The majority of VAUDE products are transported in sea containers by ship from our producers to Hamburg. If you want to know where in the world our products are made: Here you can find out more. 

From the port of Hamburg, the products are further transported:

• Some are transported by train to Ulm and from there by truck to our warehouse on the VAUDE Campus in Tettnang or to an additional rented warehouse nearby.
• Another part of the products, especially backpacks, has been stored since 2023 just a few kilometers from the port in a logistics center of our long-standing freight forwarding service provider. From there, we directly supply our specialty retail customers. This way, we save the entire train/truck transport once through Germany and partially back to our customers in the north.

We try to avoid air freight from the producer to VAUDE as much as possible, both for cost reasons and because air freight is many times more environmentally damaging than any other mode of transport.

This graph illustrates the emissions per ton of freight caused by various delivery scenarios, calculated by the non-profit organization myclimate. It's clear that emissions from sea freight, considering each product's weight is only a fraction of a ton, are minimal. However, when products are flown, emissions significantly increase.

Occasionally, we're left with no alternative but to ensure timely delivery. In addition, sales samples are typically flown so our specialty retail customers can inspect the products before ordering. Production commences only after our customers place orders, ensuring VAUDE has virtually no overproduction. Learn more here .

Where customs and organizational constraints allow, goods are delivered directly from the producer to the central warehouse of major customers or to the receiving country, such as to our customers within Asia. You can find out exactly where our customers are located on this page.

The processes in our logistics center are highly efficient thanks to state-of-the-art technology: Shipments to our specialty retail customers are volume-optimized and consolidated by truck: first with fully loaded container trucks to the freight center, then by truck to the respective region, with the last approximately 20 kilometers covered by courier vehicle.

We select our freight forwarding service providers based on their commitment to climate protection.

We have no control over the transportation of materials from various suppliers to our production partners. This is partly because we typically nominate the materials but do not directly purchase them ourselves. Learn more here. We aim to raise awareness of transportation emissions among our producers by sensitizing them to environmental issues.

Seafaring ships typically run on heavy fuel oil, which is not environmentally friendly. They emit various pollutants, particularly sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx), soot, and particulate matter.

With a clear commitment to science-based climate goals, VAUDE pledges to take on the significant challenge of reducing emissions from upstream supply chains.

This includes goods logistics, which still relies on petroleum today. As a medium-sized company, VAUDE has limited influence on persuading container shipping companies to transition to renewable energies, especially since we do not directly collaborate with them but rather with (mostly medium-sized) freight forwarders, such as Group7 based in Munich. We advocate for greater sustainability in logistics together with these partners through our industry associations. More on VAUDE's policy demands here.

Eight students from the interdisciplinary course of study, Risk Assessment and Sustainability Management (RASUM), at the Technical University Darmstadt dealt with the issue of how VAUDE can optimize its transport in order to reduce emissions over a period of several months. Read more here

The research group examined the transport routes of VAUDE products to VAUDE in light of ecological, economic and social aspects:

1. Which logistics options are available now and which will be available in the future?
2. What is the potential for reducing emissions of merchandise logistics?
3. What strategies and measures can VAUDE implement to achieve this?

Specifically, the students dealt with the following sub-projects regarding the transportation of products from the manufacturer to VAUDE:

• Flow of merchandise analysis Asia 
  
• Options for relocating production sites 
  
• Alternative transport routes, i.e. through Triest vs. Hamburg
  
• Ecological evaluation of various transport options 
  
• Comparison of rail vs. air freight from Asia 
  
• Direct delivery to customers
  
• Collaboration options 
  
• Funding
  

Working together with the experts of the Group7 logistics company and its scientific network and supported by their professor Martin Führ, the students used the data and facts provided by VAUDE to develop eleven recommendations on how we can reduce logistics emissions.

These include measures that can be quickly implemented and we will introduce at least some of them, for example, rail transport through Asia instead of airfreight and participation in logistics networks.

Other measures are more complex to implement and will have a serious impact on our processes. We are integrating these measures into our company goals and budget allocation so that we can tackle them step by step. Some optimizations require new software before we can implement them. We have recently introduced a new merchandise management system and will supplement this with route handling software. This will enable us to use the data available in the system to optimally control the transport of goods in terms of time, costs and emissions with little manual effort.

From the cargo flow data of our shipping partners, we determine VAUDE’s emissions from deliveries and shipments as part of our annual climate footprint report. This transport consists primarily of VAUDE products, but it also includes everything else that is transported on behalf of VAUDE – coffee for our employees, shop fittings for VAUDE stores and materials that are used in the VAUDE Manufaktur production facility here in Germany.

Starting from 2020, the emission factors for flights have been adjusted, resulting in one ton of air freight theoretically causing significantly more emissions than before.

In the VAUDE climate footprint, this results in the majority of emissions being attributed to air freight delivery, even though VAUDE transports the smallest quantity by weight via aircraft (only approximately 1 to 3 percent of the total cargo weight).

This shows the serious impact of air traffic on the climate. Even a small increase in the proportion of flights in VAUDE goods logistics leads to a large increase in emissions.

This graphic presents the various delivery scenarios of emissions per ton of freight. Calculations were made by the non-profit organization myclimate. It is clear that based on the weight of an individual product, ocean freight is only a tiny fraction per ton of freight. Once products are flown, however, emissions are high.

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