Summary:
In the race to decarbonise aviation, the cargo sector is breaking ahead of the pack. DHL Express and FedEx — two companies whose combined networks move millions of packages daily across hundreds of countries — have both made binding commitments to reach 30% SAF use by 2030, and they’re backing those commitments with a growing string of concrete procurement deals.
Over the course of 2025, FedEx expanded blended SAF use to five major US airports, from Los Angeles to JFK, securing the equivalent of five million gallons of neat SAF. Meanwhile, DHL signed one of the largest SAF deals ever recorded in the US air cargo sector — an 83-million-gallon, three-year agreement with Phillips 66 — and separately expanded into Asia with a new SAF deal in Japan.
The pattern is striking. Cargo carriers, not passenger airlines, are emerging as the leading SAF buyers in the United States. Understanding why reveals something important about the structure of the SAF market — and about what it actually takes to move from sustainability pledges to signed contracts.
Key Takeaways
- Both committed to 30% by 2030: DHL Express and FedEx have each made binding pledges that SAF will comprise at least 30% of their jet fuel by 2030 — commitments that dwarf most passenger airline targets.
- DHL’s mega-deal: DHL Express agreed to purchase 83 million gallons (240,000 tonnes) of SAF over three years from Phillips 66’s Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex — one of the largest US air cargo SAF transactions on record.
- FedEx at five US airports: By end of 2025, FedEx was using blended SAF at LAX, O’Hare, Miami, DFW, and JFK — 5 million neat gallons committed, with DFW marking the first-ever cargo airline SAF purchase at that airport outside a pilot programme.
- Cargo economics drive urgency: Unlike passenger carriers, express freight operators face direct client pressure on supply chain emissions — making SAF a commercial necessity, not just a PR commitment.
- Asia expansion underway: DHL’s January 2025 deal with Cosmo Oil Marketing in Japan (7.2 million litres/year starting April 2025) marks the first international express carrier SAF initiative in Asia.
- IATA warning on supply: Despite cargo sector momentum, IATA projects SAF production growth will slow in 2026 — raising questions about whether supply can keep pace with rising demand.
The numbers paint a clear picture of who’s doing the heavy lifting in the North American SAF market. FedEx moved from zero US SAF deployments to five major airports in the span of eight months in 2025 — starting at LAX in May with a 3-million-gallon Neste deal, adding O’Hare and Miami in October, and finishing the year with DFW and JFK in December through World Fuel Services. Each deployment was a first: FedEx became the first US all-cargo airline to purchase SAF at O’Hare, and the first airline of any kind to buy SAF at DFW outside a pilot project.
DHL’s ambitions run even larger. Its agreement with Phillips 66 — for 83 million gallons over three years from the Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex north of San Francisco — is one of the biggest SAF supply transactions the US cargo sector has seen. The deal will help DHL deliver on its GoGreen Plus programme, which allows customers to compensate for their freight emissions by contributing to the cost of SAF. In a B2B freight market where corporate clients are under growing scrutiny of their own Scope 3 emissions, that’s not a peripheral feature — it’s a core value proposition.
“By securing a reliable supply of SAF, we are not only reducing our carbon emissions and those within our customers’ supply chains, but also setting a precedent for the logistics and air cargo industries in the US.” — Travis Cobb, EVP Global Operations and Aviation, DHL Express
Why Cargo Is Ahead
The cargo sector’s SAF leadership isn’t accidental — it reflects a set of structural incentives that don’t apply in the same way to passenger airlines.
Corporate freight clients face increasing scrutiny of their own supply chain emissions, particularly Scope 3 categories that include air freight. When a Fortune 500 company ships goods via DHL or FedEx and then reports those emissions to shareholders, regulators, or customers, the carbon intensity of the freight leg matters. SAF-powered shipments reduce that number. For DHL and FedEx, offering SAF-backed freight is a competitive differentiator — one their enterprise clients are willing to pay a premium for.
Passenger airlines face no equivalent demand-side pull. Individual travellers rarely pay premiums for SAF-offset flights, and voluntary carbon programmes have largely stalled. The commercial case for passenger carriers is less immediate, even as the long-term regulatory pressure grows.
Cargo carriers also tend to have more concentrated hub operations, which simplifies SAF logistics. Deploying SAF at five airports covering the majority of a cargo network is operationally feasible in a way that matching the same coverage across 150+ passenger airline destinations is not.
The DHL Playbook
DHL Group has built perhaps the most comprehensive SAF procurement strategy of any logistics company globally. Its multi-year deal with World Energy (667 million litres) signed in 2024 provides long-term volume certainty. The Phillips 66 Rodeo deal adds diversification and US-specific production. The Japan deal with Cosmo Oil Marketing — 7.2 million litres per year, starting April 2025, the first such programme in the international express industry in Asia — signals genuine geographic ambition rather than token activity.
Each deal also serves a market-building function. By committing to multi-year volumes, DHL provides the demand signal that refinery operators need to justify capacity investment. This is the virtuous cycle the SAF market has long struggled to achieve: airlines and logistics companies have historically been reluctant to commit to volumes that don’t yet exist at scale, while producers won’t invest in scale without committed volumes. DHL’s strategy breaks that deadlock — at least for its own supply chain.
The FedEx Approach
FedEx has taken a slightly different path: airport-by-airport expansion, each deployment validated before the next. The LAX deal with Neste was first, establishing proof of concept. O’Hare followed, enabled by existing fuel infrastructure and Illinois policy conditions. Miami added international reach, supporting Latin American and Caribbean routes. DFW and JFK — both handled through World Fuel Services — expanded the network to the two biggest cargo hubs in the US interior and the Northeast.
What makes the FedEx rollout notable is how deliberately it has been sequenced. Each deployment is structured to generate learnings — on logistics, blending ratios, supplier reliability, and infrastructure requirements — that inform the next one. Karen Blanks Ellis, FedEx’s Chief Sustainability Officer, has been candid that the aviation industry still faces a supply-demand mismatch, and that policy frameworks must prioritise production incentives, not just demand mandates. She warned in January 2026: “When SAF policy focuses on the air carriers and demand side of the equation, there is a risk of not concurrently building up the actual alternative fuel supply needed to comply and make progress on emissions reduction goals.”
The Supply Warning
Against the backdrop of cargo sector momentum, IATA’s December 2025 forecast projects that global SAF production growth will actually slow in 2026 — a sobering counterpoint to the deal-signing activity. The warning is structural: feedstock constraints, particularly for the used cooking oil and animal fats that dominate today’s SAF supply, are increasingly binding. New HEFA capacity takes years to commission. And eSAF, the only pathway with genuinely unlimited feedstock, remains effectively pre-commercial.
For DHL and FedEx, a supply slowdown creates real execution risk against their 30% by 2030 targets. Five million gallons committed across five airports is meaningful as a proof of concept, but it represents a small fraction of the volumes required to hit 30% of fuel use for fleets of 700+ aircraft. The gap between current procurement and the 2030 target is still enormous — and the supply chain that needs to close that gap is exactly the one IATA is warning may stall.
The cargo sector’s leadership on SAF demand is genuine and consequential. But demand alone can’t decarbonise aviation. The next chapter of this story depends on whether producers, policymakers, and infrastructure investors move with the same urgency that DHL and FedEx have already shown.
Source: GreenAir News | FedEx Newsroom