Lufthansa Cargo takes to the skies with lighter containers

Europe’s leading cargo airline is reducing fuel consumption and emissions further by lightweight versions of the LD3 containers.

The LD3 standard containers produced using lighter composite materials are helping to radically reduce fuel consumption and emissions at Europe’s leading cargo airline.

With some 500,000 container movements per year, the good 14-kg difference over conventional containers amounts to a weight saving of seven million kgs. Therefore, using these flyweight containers to transport cargo and luggage will reduce fuel consumption by 2,000 tonnes and CO2 emissions by a good 7,000 tonnes per year.

“The new, lighter containers are still extremely robust and strong in spite of being almost completely made of plastic,” said Karl-Rudolf Rupprecht, board member, operations, at Lufthansa Cargo.

“Replacing all of our LD3 standard containers brings us a good deal closer to our goal of reducing our specific CO2 emissions by a quarter by 2020 compared to 2005. We want to continue to fulfil our role as an industry leader in the future as well and help make air freight greener through innovative and modern technologies.”