Germany's DHL has announced that its Global Forwarding division has adopted 100 per cent electronic airway bill (e-AWB) for shipments originating in Hong Kong that are transported onboard Cathay Pacific Airways and Dragonair flights.

"The new e-AWB arrangement is yet another important green milestone for DHL Global Forwarding," said Edward Hui, managing director, DHL Global Forwarding Hong Kong, Macau & South China, in a company statement.

"We are delighted to join hands with our customers and business partners towards a more sustainable shipping model, where at the same time resources saving is achieved." Mr Hui said the company aims to expand the use of e-AWB to other business partners.

According to DHL Global Forwarding, the average cargo shipment generates more than 30 documents that are used and/or handled by the various parties involved including shippers, freight forwarders, handling agents, export and import brokers, airlines, customs and other government authorities.

It pointed out that the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has set the end of 2014 as the target for 100 per cent e-AWB penetration between all airfreight forwarders and all airlines on all feasible trade lanes.

"The new e-AWB arrangement shows the company's strong commitment to this important industry initiative that will drastically reduce the paper trail and speed transit times of airfreight shipments through documentation simplification," the statement said.

The company said the benefits of implementing e-AWB include lower processing costs for customers in paper handling and physical filing; reduced data entry errors and delays due to missing AWB; and enhanced operations flexibility whereby real-time AWB information access is possible for all personnel from all locations.

Implementation of the 100 per cent electronic airway bill (e-AWB) initiative is part of parent company Deutsche Post DHL's environmental protection programme GoGreen that has set the target of improving the carbon dioxide efficiency of its operations and those of its subcontractors by 30 per cent by 2020, compared to its 2007 baseline.

The group will have sent around one billion GoGreen shipments of letters, parcels and express deliveries by the end of 2010, which is about a third more than last year. The company said that this year the group has offset over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) for its customers, compared with 38,500 tonnes CO2 in 2009