Sustainable Freight

Shifting freight by rail benefits everyone. When our customers choose rail they are helping to create a safer and healthier environment for all and a positive future for New Zealand.

With New Zealand’s carbon targets being established, more and more organisations are measuring and monitoring their own carbon footprints. We help our customers to reduce their carbon footprint, as rail transport is 70 per cent more carbon-efficient than heavy road freight.

We aim to build on our natural advantage as a low emissions transport option for our customers and continue with initiatives to further reduce energy usage across our operations. KiwiRail helps its freight customers quantify the emissions benefits of choosing rail over road through a monthly ‘Steel Wheels’ report. The report illustrates the carbon reduction achieved using rail and includes information on fuel savings and the reduced heavy vehicle impact their movements on rail have made. This information supports customers in telling their own sustainability story on how they are taking action to address climate change by choosing rail.

Steel Wheels shows that in the year to June 2024, KiwiRail transported around 3.5 billion net tonne kilometres of freight, which equates to taking more than 1 million truck trips off the road, avoiding 229,000 tonnes of CO2e emissions.

Learn more

Read about Sidings, Increasing freight efficiency here.

View Steel Wheels reports for FY2024.

Partner with us

To find out more about our sustainable transport solutions, contact a member of our sales team.