Declining Importance of Logistics Sustainability in Bavaria

The May edition of the Index | Sustainability | Transport + Logistics | Bavaria notes a further decline in the importance of sustainability for the transport and logistics industry. One reason is still the high energy and fuel costs, which push other priorities into the background.

(Nuremberg) The transport and logistics industry in Bavaria is not recovering, however, “Green Logistics”: While the business situation continues the upward trend after the “toll shock” at the beginning of the year and improves by 9.1 points compared to the previous month, the importance of the topic “sustainability” in the industry plummets by a whole 17.1 points for the first time into the negative range.

In recent months, the decreasing importance of the topic of “sustainability” in everyday business had already become apparent due to high cost burdens and a poor overall economic situation. However, from March to April 2024, a significant drop can be observed again, which is also reflected in the topic of “willingness to pay surcharges for sustainable logistics services”: Here, a large majority of respondents indicated that customers are only willing to pay low or no surcharges for sustainable services and offerings.

The high overall costs – especially energy and fuel costs – still hurt the industry and offer little room for additional cost burdens, even if this would be advantageous for CSRD reporting. Since this will also become mandatory for many companies in the transport and logistics industry in the coming years, at least a stabilization or even slight improvement of the current trend is to be expected in the medium term.

As part of the Logistics Barometer Bavaria

The sustainability index is determined as part of the Logistics Barometer Bavaria. The expert survey of the Bavarian transport and logistics industry asks monthly for assessments of the importance of as well as the willingness to pay for the topic.