Royal Vaassen

About Royal Vaassen

Royal Vaassen is a manufacturing company which produces high-performance flexible packaging for consumer goods such as dairy and foods. Their customers include some of the leading dairy brands globally including Nestlé, Danone and Lactalis. The flexible packaging contains aluminium, plastic and paper so finding sustainable packaging solutions is key to their success, and is also one of the core values of the company alongside innovation and excellent customer service.

Royal Vaassen’s ambitions to be market leaders in sustainability

The business has produced a bi-annual sustainability report since 2022 and has been reporting annually in-line with the ESG Data Convergence Initiative (EDCI) and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) for their investors, Egeria. In 2024, they conducted their first double materiality assessment (DMA) for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and identified six material topics (out of prior identified important topics) which they will begin reporting on in 2026, despite the delay to the timelines following the Omnibus Simplification Package announcement. Royal Vaassen’s Sustainability Engineer, Alex Qinhong Wu highlighted their strong commitment to the CSRD reporting process, recognizing that many of their customers continue to adhere to this framework. Rather than slowing down due to regulatory delays, Royal Vaassen views this as an opportunity to take a proactive approach—staying ahead of industry trends, meeting evolving customer expectations, and reinforcing its position as an industry leaders with regards to their sustainability disclosure.

Packaging companies like Royal Vaassen face complex reporting challenges due to the diversity of materials (foil, plastic, paper, etc.) as well as broad supplier networks. Read on to find out how KEY ESG's tailored approach enabled them to track emissions and impact with granularity across materials and regions and to set a high reporting standard for responsible business practices within the industry.

KEY ESG saves time and improves accuracy of CSRD reporting process

Royal Vaassen completed their first DMA in 2024 with the help of KEY ESG’s platform combined with internal research lead by their Sustainability Engineer, Alex Qinhong Wu. Implementing the data aggregation process relied on co-workers from across the business. Alex said:

“KEY ESG’s centralised data collection platform removes the manual processes and really helps with the data accuracy."

The KEY ESG platform has significantly streamlined Alex’s reporting process, cutting the time required for data gathering in half and allowing for a much more efficient and timely data collection. What once required considerable time and effort can now be completed with ease, enabling Alex to focus on higher-value sustainability initiatives.

“Aside from huge time savings and improvements to our data accuracy, we were able to import two years’ worth of carbon emissions data into the platform, analyse it, and make strategic decisions about how we can reduce our emissions.”

“Having all our sustainability data in one place has facilitated stronger relationships with our stakeholders, especially with the customers, as we can handle their data requests quickly and efficiently.”

What’s next for Royal Vaassen

Pursuing efforts to maintain its strong relationships with customers and investors, Royal Vaassen has got ambitious targets with regards to its sustainability performance. KEY ESG is enabling them to handle EDCI, SFDR and now CSRD reporting seamlessly so the business is now looking to understand if the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) will further enable them to improve customer relations. KEY ESG’s platform also aligns with the SBTi, and since Royal Vaassen already has its historic carbon data stored in the platform, it is an achievable next step to make a commitment to the SBTi.