After several years of testing sea transport of flowers from Kenya to the Netherlands, Xpol was forced to refocus on air freight in 2024 by the unrest in the Red Sea. But how does this affect the company's environmental impact? To map its own footprint, it turned to Greenhouse Sustainability.

Xpol is a business-to-business service provider, specializing for 15 years in flowers from Africa and increasingly from the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. It serves a large number of European supermarket chains and wholesalers, with whom it works closely. Sustainability has been an important theme within Xpol for many years.

Managing Director Tom Vermeer: “It is an ongoing issue what is better for the environment: a Dutch rose or a Kenyan rose. Products from Kenya may have to deal with longer transport, but in the Netherlands it takes considerably more energy to grow a rose. So it's important to put all the facts side by side so you can make the right choices. We want to know how we can improve our footprint, but we also want to have answers to questions from the market.”

Facts side by side
In collaboration with Greenhouse Sustainability, the footprint for 2023 and 2024 was therefore calculated and Xpol gained a better understanding of the chain, its own performance and the impact of air transport compared to sea transport. That insight, according to Vermeer, allows you as a company to determine how to further reduce your CO2 emissions. “Of course we already had a sense of how things were roughly, but only after that official measurement did we really get a good picture of our situation. For example, after the calculations we optimized the ratio of road transport to air freight, which has a positive impact on the footprint, also for our facility in Finland.”

Sharing calculations
Xpol also shares the results of its footprint calculation with customers. “We now have an answer to questions from the market. Being transparent also brings us to the table of retailers in a different way. More as a partner than just a supplier. You can determine together how that footprint can be further reduced. And, of course, we also hope for appreciation for our sustainable efforts.”

Greenhouse Sustainability is now looking at how to link with growers and the data they have. “Because if we can link our data, we can actually start comparing entire chains properly,” Vermeer said. “And if at some point we can also include retailers” calculations, for example by mapping how much they have to throw away, you can set up the chain in such a way that together we can take another step towards sustainability.".

In the details
Meanwhile, Xpol hopes to resume sea transport soon. In addition, the goal in the coming period is to go one step further and further with calculation at the customer and product level and dive even more into the details and connect the grower there as well.

Pictured, left to right: Alejandra Tapia (Xpol), Katharina Schuster (Greenhouse Sustainability), Henri Potze (Greenhouse Sustainability), Tom Vermeer (Xpol) and Sophie Hoogkamp (Xpol).