How Nippon Express expands its sustainable offering and improves business performance
Context
Nippon Express, a global freight forwarder with no owned fleet or infrastructure of its own, was hearing the same request from every direction: existing customers and tender committees alike wanted a credible sustainability offering across air, sea, and road. A small team meant there was no realistic way to build and roll out that capability internally, and every tender without a sustainability answer was a tender at risk of being lost, or a renewal at risk of stalling.
Goal
The goal was to turn that gap into a growth lever: offer customers sustainable fuel options across all three transport modes, without owning any of the underlying supply infrastructure, and without adding operational burden to an already stretched team.
SAF batch registry
4 active batches · by origin airport
1,240.0 t CO₂e
| Batch · Airport | Fuel | Reduction | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| B-3401 · Narita (NRT) | SAF | 318.0 t | Allocated |
| B-3402 · Frankfurt (FRA) | SAF | 402.5 t | Partial |
| B-3403 · Amsterdam (AMS) | SAF | 276.0 t | Partial |
| B-3404 · Tokyo Haneda (HND) | SAF | 243.5 t | Open |
Available to sell: 168.4 t CO₂e
Our Solution
One partner, three transport modes
SQUAKE gave Nippon Express a single sustainable fuel offering spanning Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), Sustainable Marine Fuel (SMF), and Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) for road, all through one Book & Claim system rather than three separate supplier relationships. Pricing is competitive because it draws on SQUAKE's existing sourcing across the same fuels, and the process is automated end to end, so Nippon Express's small team can sell and deliver the offering without becoming fuel-procurement or carbon-accounting specialists themselves.
Air
Sea
Road
Scalable by design
Because the process is automated and integrated once, adding new lanes, modes, or customers doesn't add proportional operational work. That scalability is what let Nippon Express turn a customer-facing ask into a repeatable part of its commercial motion, usable in every tender response and every account conversation, rather than a bespoke project handled case by case.
Outcome
From missed opportunity to new revenue line
Within six months, Nippon Express sold mid four-digit tons of SAF, turning what had been a missed revenue opportunity into a genuine additional profit source. The sustainability offering now factors into more than 10 new tenders per quarter, giving the sales team a concrete answer to a request that used to cost them deals.