See All Insights
Veritiv Corporation, a growing organization with an expanding operational footprint, faced a critical challenge when they completed a significant acquisition of Orora Packaging Solutions (OPS). This acquisition fundamentally transformed their business portfolio, adding energy-intensive manufacturing sites and accounting for approximately 46% of their overall inventory. As a company committed to environmental stewardship and regulatory compliance, Veritiv needed to navigate the complex process of recalculating their historical greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to accurately reflect their expanded operations while maintaining transparency in their sustainability reporting.
The acquisition of OPS presented Veritiv with a multifaceted challenge that threatened to complicate their emissions reporting and sustainability goals. The addition of manufacturing sites significantly altered their operational portfolio, creating the potential for emissions to appear dramatically increased year-over-year simply due to the acquisition rather than actual operational changes.
Veritiv had established a recalculation policy requiring any material change to their inventory boundary resulting in over a 5% change to trigger a full recalculation—a threshold clearly exceeded by the OPS acquisition. However, the organization was hesitant to complete the recalculation immediately, as they planned additional future acquisitions and wanted to avoid repeating the labor-intensive recalculation process annually.
The primary obstacles included obtaining comprehensive historical data from OPS, concerns about the significant level of effort required to recalculate historical emissions across multiple years, and the need to comply with GHG Protocol standards while maintaining operational efficiency. Additionally, Veritiv needed to ensure they could demonstrate genuine emissions reductions from their legacy operations separate from acquisition-related increases.
Leveraging their long-standing partnership with ENGIE Impact, which had been managing Veritiv's GHG inventories since 2020, the company implemented a comprehensive solution using ENGIE's Ellipse platform combined with expert GHG accounting services.
ENGIE Impact's approach centered on performing a baseline recalculation that incorporated historical emissions data from the acquired company into Veritiv's existing inventory. The implementation process was streamlined due to several key factors: ENGIE's deep familiarity with Veritiv's existing emissions inventory, the availability of well-organized historical emissions data from OPS covering 2020 through 2023, and the capabilities of the Ellipse platform to enable easy emission calculations and data management.
The solution provided Veritiv with sophisticated filtering capabilities through Ellipse, allowing them to view emissions data in multiple ways—including legacy business emissions separate from acquisition-related emissions, and trending analysis for both the original operations and the acquired company. This granular approach ensured compliance with the GHG Protocol while providing actionable insights for ongoing emissions management.
The implementation delivered significant quantifiable outcomes that positioned Veritiv for continued success in their sustainability journey. Most importantly, Veritiv successfully reported their recalculated emissions in their 2025 sustainability report, achieving full compliance with both the GHG Protocol and their internal recalculation policy.
The solution revealed impressive emissions reduction achievements across both legacy and acquired operations. Veritiv's legacy business demonstrated a 42% reduction in emissions from 2020 to 2024, while the acquired OPS operations showed a 26% reduction over the same period, indicating that the acquisition aligned with Veritiv's emission reduction goals.
The Ellipse platform's filtering capabilities enabled Veritiv to maintain transparency in their sustainability reporting while providing stakeholders with clear insights into both organic emissions reductions and acquisition-related changes. This capability supports ongoing strategic decision-making and helps the organization plan for sustainable growth.
The successful completion of this complex recalculation has positioned Veritiv to confidently pursue their growth strategy while maintaining their commitment to environmental responsibility, proving that business expansion and emissions reduction can be achieved simultaneously through strategic planning and the right technological tools.
Let’s work together to accelerate your resource management strategy.
