Rubio Monocoat

About Rubio Monocoat

Rubio Monocoat is a company headquartered in Belgium which provides wood sealants, varnishes and protection products to customers and businesses around the world. The brand was founded in 2000 but the company, Muylle Facon, has been around since 1906 and was originally a mastic manufacturer. In 2005, Rubio Monocoat produced its groundbreaking product Rubio Monocoat Oil Plus which was an immediate success with customers thanks to its unique molecular bonding technology and one-coat application. Since then, the company has continued to scale and now sells to over 82 countries and treats over 80 million square meters of wood each year.

Rubio Monocoat: a business built on sustainability values

Rubio Monocoat has built its success on the belief that wood should be treated with respect. They aim to bring the natural beauty of wood into the spotlight. To this end, ecological and sustainable values have been at the heart of their product development and business activities right from the start. This has resulted in them creating their flagship product, Oil Plus, with 0% Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) which removes the toxicity of using the product for users and the environment during application. They were the first producers of 0% VOC wood sealants and still today, outperform the toxicity levels required by legislation. The other aspect of sustainability that has been at the forefront of the business management concerns actions that have been set up in order to reduce the different waste flows.  Rubio Monocoat also took actions to improve the recyclability of its packaging.

KEY ESG’s platform enables Rubio Monocoat to hold data-driven conversations around sustainability

The business therefore already had significant sustainability credentials. However, when the management team decided to report on a set group of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) metrics, there emerged an opportunity to adopt a more data-driven approach. As a result, the ESG Manager, Johan Boonaert, begun a data collection and reporting process which would allow them to make data-driven decisions about where to prioritise their sustainability efforts. Johan spoke of his ambitions for the KEY ESG platform:

“We wanted to turn the ESG data into business efficiency. We are now seeing the first wave of data-driven conversations around sustainability and benefitting from the superior insights we can draw from them.”

This effort would also enable them to stand out from competitors in a crowded and increasingly sustainability-aware customer-base.

The outcome and next steps for Rubio Monocoat

Using KEY ESG’s platform for ESG data collection and reporting, Johan was able to create a single source of truth and begin having data-driven conversations around sustainability. KEY ESG has helped to uncover strengths and opportunities within their sustainability strategy and identify ways in which to improve. Moreover, KEY ESG has equipped them with data points which can make them stand out from the crowd and outperform their competitors.

Supported by the management team, Rubio Monocoat report on the ESG Data Convergence Initiative (EDCI) metrics. Using this standardised framework has also simplified the reporting process for Rubio Monocoat’s other external stakeholders.