Case studies/Ekoplaza
Organic grocery retail & wholesale
Netherlands & Belgium
Cradle-to-shelf CO₂ · Climate ratings · Nutri-Score
ISO 14067 · verified by SGS
ISO 14067 · verified by SGS
20,000 products. Full carbon footprints. Weeks, not years.
- Ekoplaza, supplied by Udea, the Netherlands' leading organic wholesaler, wanted a footprint for every product on its shelves
- Cradle-to-shelf carbon, climate ratings and nutrition scores for the entire catalogue, in two markets
- An LCA report for every single product
~20,000products footprinted, spanning the full assortment
~40,000market-specific LCA calculations: every SKU, per country of sale
43 / 125categories and subcategories covered, food and non-food
7lifecycle stages resolved per product, from farm to store losses
Weeksfrom first data delivery to complete catalogue coverage
1 feedall the client provided: product metadata and packaging data
The challenge
The whole catalogue, not a sample
- The whole catalogue: roughly 20,000 SKUs, 43 categories, two countries
- Consultancy rate: 2 to 8 weeks and €1,500 to €5,000 per product, decades of analyst time at catalogue scale
- Category averages cannot tell a low-impact product from a high-impact one on the same shelf
- Second constraint: no capacity at Udea for a data-prep project. It had to run on what they already had
What we did
One feed in, a full LCA out
- Two inputs the client already maintained: product metadata and packaging data per SKU
- The pipeline did everything else, every SKU travels this path automatically
In · one-time exportProduct metadata and packaging data
- In whatever form it exists
- No data-prep project on the client's side
→
Out · per product, per marketLCA report for NL and for BE
- CO₂e per SKU and per kg, per-ingredient and per-stage breakdown
- A to E climate rating, km-by-car equivalent
- Nutri-Score, NOVA
1Extract
- Every product fact from the raw feed, any format
- Structured records
2Enrich
- Gaps filled from outside sources
- Cross-referenced per product
3Decode recipes
- Ingredient declarations to full hierarchies
- Estimated weights, origins, sub-recipes
4Harmonize
- One consistent schema
- 20,000 products modelled and compared the same way
5Calculate impact
- Seven lifecycle stages: farm to store losses
- SGS-verified ISO 14067 methodology
- Once per country of sale
6Rate and report
- Climate ratings, car-km equivalents, nutrition scores
- A validated dataset and a report per product
- A second market multiplies output, not effort
- The Belgian market came essentially for free alongside the Dutch one
ISO 14067 methodology, verified by SGSEvery footprint on this page was computed with GreenSwapp's carbon footprint methodology, independently verified by SGS in accordance with ISO 14064-3 as meeting ISO 14067 and aligned to ISO 14040/14044. The numbers are defensible in front of a buyer, a regulator or a customer.
Scale and speed
Every dot is fifty products
- The complete assortment, end to end, in weeks
- Thousands of complete product LCAs per day at peak throughput
The Ekoplaza / Udea assortment, footprinted in this engagement
400 dots × 50 products = the whole catalogueA traditional programme covers about a dozen products in the same window: less than a single dot.
- Each LCA: full ingredient decomposition, seven-stage model, dual-country calculation
- Seasonal ranges of hundreds of new SKUs get footprinted in the normal cycle, not a backlog
- Reformulated products are simply re-run
In their words
What Udea says
"We wanted every product in our range to carry real health and climate data, not vague claims. GreenSwapp AI delivered metrics for all 25,000 SKUs in just ten weeks: CO₂ per product, the full chain breakdown, the lot. Now every shopper can see the impact behind what they buy, right on the product page. It's made Ekoscope credible in a way we couldn't have achieved alone."
Steven Ijzerman · Head of Data and Quality, Udea / Ekoplaza
What it saved
Impossible, then routine
Compared with the only alternative that existed before: manual LCA work. Conservative estimates.*
| Traditional manual LCA | This engagement | |
|---|---|---|
| Analyst effort for the catalogue | ≈ 900 analyst-weeks (15 to 20 analyst-years) | Weeks, one automated run |
| Time per product | 2 to 8 weeks | Minutes of compute |
| Cost per product | €1,500 to €5,000 | A small fraction |
| Client effort required | Questionnaires, data collection, supplier interviews per product | Export product and packaging data once |
| Updates and new SKUs | New study each time | Automatic re-run |
| Coverage | A handful of hero products | Every product on the shelf |
- Full-catalogue carbon transparency: from economically impossible to routine
- 15 to 20 analyst-years of LCA work delivered, at a small fraction of the cost
The hassle that disappeared
What Udea's team never had to do
✕
No data projectThe client sent the product and packaging data they already maintained. No questionnaires, no per-product supplier surveys, no dedicated internal team.
✕
No methodology burdenIngredient parsing, emission-factor matching, lifecycle modelling and category benchmarking are all handled inside the pipeline. The client never had to become an LCA expert.
✕
No stale numbersReformulations, packaging changes and new seasonal SKUs are re-computed as they arrive, so footprints track the actual shelf.
✕
No single-use deliverableThe same per-SKU results feed shelf labels, sustainability reporting, assortment decisions and supplier conversations, with Nutri-Score and NOVA included in the same pass.
Why this scales
The marginal product is nearly free
- Cost scales with compute, not headcount
- 2,000 or 50,000 SKUs: same engagement shape. Connect the feed, run, deliver
- A country of sale multiplies coverage, not effort
- From "no carbon data" to "a footprint on every product" in weeks
More case studies
A footprint on every product, in weeks.
Methodology. Product carbon footprints per ISO 14067 (methodology verified by SGS in accordance with ISO 14064-3), cradle-to-shelf across seven lifecycle stages, computed per SKU and per country of sale.
* Catalogue figures (SKU, category and market counts) are drawn from the delivered dataset. Traditional-LCA cost and duration figures are industry-typical estimates for consultancy-grade single-product food LCAs; analyst-year and savings figures are derived from them and stated conservatively. Exact engagement duration and pricing available on request.