DHL Express, Malaysia Aviation Group partner to reduce GHG emissions using SAF

Photo: DHL Express

DHL Express announced March 18 that it has signed an agreement with Malaysia Aviation Group, the parent company of Malaysia Airlines, for the use of DHL’s GoGreen Plus service.

The partnership enables MAG to reduce the greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions linked to its time-definite international shipments through investment in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) used within DHL’s air network.

This is projected to decrease approximately 300 metric tons of lifecycle CO2-equivalent emissions in 2026, compared to the previous year’s baseline.

“SAF is currently one of the most developed lower-carbon solutions for reducing lifecycle emissions from long-distance air transport,” said Julian Neo, the managing director of DHL Express Malaysia and Brunei. “It is therefore encouraging to see a national carrier of MAG’s stature amplify its position in the lower-carbon aviation-fuel ecosystem and help galvanize wider sectoral adoption. This motivates our ongoing efforts to support the sustainability goals of businesses through carbon-reduced logistics.”

Launched in 2023, GoGreen Plus allows customers to leverage SAF to lower their indirect scope 3 emissions in their value chain arising from upstream and downstream transportation and distribution.

The service is made possible by several SAF contracts that DHL has signed with partners such as BP, Neste, Cosmo Energy and Cathay Group.

Made from sustainable feedstocks, such as used cooking oil and other residues, SAF can cut lifecycle-GHG emissions by around 80 percent compared to conventional jet fuel.

DHL’s GoGreen Plus service is enabled by the book-and-claim approach where DHL can directly replace fossil fuels with sustainable fuels within the logistic company’s network and attribute the associated lifecycle-emission reductions to customers like MAG, even when their shipments are not physically transported with the assets using these fuels.

MAG’s subscription to GoGreen Plus applies to inbound and outbound air freight fulfilled by DHL Express across the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific trade lanes.

This underpins MAG’s corporate-sustainability agenda by addressing the lifecycle emissions associated with its own international-logistics activities, complementing its broader efforts to advance SAF adoption across passenger and cargo operations.

As an aviation group with both airline and air-cargo businesses, MAG continues to explore scalable SAF pathways across business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) segments, reinforcing its long-term commitment to lower-carbon air-transport solutions.

Since 2021, MAG has operated SAF-powered flights across both passenger and cargo services, building operational readiness while strengthening infrastructure integration across its network.

These foundations are now enabling the group to scale SAF deployment in support of lower-carbon air-freight solutions for corporate customers.

To support regional ecosystem development, MAG conducted a two-week SAF uplift on the Kuala Lumpur-London route in 2025 to assess Malaysia’s local supply-chain readiness at KLIA, laying important groundwork for future SAF adoption.

In parallel, the group continues to collaborate with industry partners and local feedstock suppliers to explore pathways for domestic SAF production, helping advance commercially viable SAF solutions for passenger, corporate travel and cargo operations.

“SAF remains one of the most critical levers in aviation’s transition to net zero by 2050,” said Philip See, MAG’s chief sustainability officer. “As a hard-to-abate sector, scaling SAF requires coordinated action across the value chain—from policy to production to infrastructure and demand creation. Our collaboration with DHL Express reflects the growing momentum for market-based solutions such as book-and-claim mechanisms that can accelerate SAF uptake beyond regulatory mandates. We are committed to playing our part—not only through operational adoption across our network, but by supporting ecosystem development in Malaysia and the region to enable a progress toward a credible and scalable pathway for a lower-carbon aviation industry.”