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BRSSZ NLRTM
Coffee

Santos to Rotterdam freight CO2 emissions

One tonne of cargo shipped Santos (BRSSZ) to Rotterdam (NLRTM) by sea emits 76.5 kg CO2e well-to-wake at GLEC v3.2 default factors. The same tonne by air emits 5,958.4 kg — roughly 78x the sea number.

Lane noteSouth Atlantic crossing — 14-16 days at sea. A meaningful share of this lane is reefer (coffee, beef), which adds 12-18% to the per-tkm CO2 vs dry containers because of compressor running on bunker generators.

Per-tonne CO2e by mode

Sea freight

Container ship 5,000-9,000 TEU + bulk carriers

76.5
kg CO2e
Distance
10,200 km
Factor (WTW)
7.5 g CO2e/tkm
Per shipment
1 t × 10,200 km
Factor source
GLEC v3.2 container 5,000-8,000 TEU (Post-Panamax, WTW)

Air freight

Long-haul belly cargo

5,958.4
kg CO2e
Distance
9,800 km
Factor (WTW)
608 g CO2e/tkm
Per shipment
1 t × 9,800 km
Factor source
GLEC v3.2 long-haul belly cargo allocation (WTW)

Mode comparison

On the Santos to Rotterdam lane, air freight emits about 78 times more CO2e per tonne than sea freight at GLEC v3.2 defaults. The gap is driven by the WTW factor difference between long-haul belly cargo (608 g CO2e/tkm) and a Container ship 5,000-9,000 TEU + bulk carriers (7.5 g CO2e/tkm), partly offset by the shorter great-circle air routing.

Try this in the calculator

These numbers are GLEC v3.2 defaults at 1 tonne. Change weight, vessel class, or load factor in the calculator and see the per-mode CO2e update under ISO 14083:2023 data quality tiers.

Methodology references

Need primary-data emissions for Santos to Rotterdam?

The EcoFreight API ingests AIS, bunker delivery notes, and shipment manifests to return ISO 14083 Tier 3 primary-data numbers for the same lane. Free tier covers 1,000 calculations per month.