LFE and CarbonCloud join forces to put a carbon number on every bottle.

The wine industry is being asked a hard question from more directions than ever before. Retailers want product-level carbon data. Science-based targets require a credible Scope 3 number. New regulation keeps lifting the bar. And for a wine company, almost all of that footprint sits upstream, spread across hundreds of products, dozens of countries, and a chain that runs from the vineyard to the shelf.

LFE, one of the leading wine importers in The Netherlands, selling over 25 million bottles of wine per year, decided to take it on. We are glad to share that LFE has joined CarbonCloud to measure, understand, and reduce the footprint of its range of wines.

Why wine is a genuinely hard Scope 3 problem

A bottle of wine packs together three of the most demanding parts of food and drink carbon accounting.

First, agriculture. Most of a wine’s footprint is set in the vineyard, long before it reaches a bottler, and it varies by region, grape, and growing practice.

Second, glass. Glass is one of the most energy-intensive packaging materials there is, and two bottles of identical weight can carry very different footprints depending on where and how the glass was made.

Third, transport. Wine is heavy and travels far, often as finished bottles across oceans, so how and where it moves matters a great deal.

Add a portfolio of hundreds of wines from suppliers all over the world, and you have a Scope 3 problem that is easy to underestimate and hard to solve well.

LFE’s approach: start now, refine continuously

LFE has committed to setting science-based targets, which means it needs product footprints it can stand behind. Rather than waiting for perfect data, the team chose a pragmatic path: build a solid baseline across the portfolio using high-quality secondary data, then add primary data exactly where it changes the answer, starting with packaging weight, bottling location, and transport.

From there, the picture sharpens over time. As suppliers contribute real data, the footprints move from informed estimates to measured fact, without changing methodology and without starting over.

The levers that actually move wine’s footprint

The value of measuring at product level is that it points to action. In wine, a handful of decisions do most of the work.

• Ship in bulk, bottle in market. Moving wine in bulk and bottling closer to the customer can cut transport emissions significantly compared with shipping finished bottles across the world.
• Lighter glass. Shaving grams off a bottle reduces both packaging and transport emissions, because the weight travels the whole way.
• Cleaner glass. The energy mix of the glassworks is a major factor. Glass from a furnace running on low-carbon power can carry a far smaller footprint than the same bottle made elsewhere.
• Reusable bottles. Where it is workable, reuse avoids the biggest single hit in the bottle’s life.

CarbonCloud is built to capture all of this at the level of the individual product, so a real improvement shows up as a real reduction in the number. That granularity is what LFE was looking for.

“LFE has made a commitment to reduce our carbon footprint in line with the Paris Agreements with a 1.5 degrees limit. Therefore we need to start measuring the footprint of the wines we sell in our market, as this causes by far the largest part of our emissions. We believe CarbonCloud is the partner for us that will genuinely help us in this journey. The CarbonCloud platform is genuinely easy to use, and it lets us model improvements in real detail, from the weight and source of the glass to farming practices and transport. When we change something in the supply chain, we can actually see it in the footprint. For a wine business, that is what makes the data worth having.”

Marcel KerkmeesterManaging Director, LFE

Momentum in wine and spirits

Few categories demand the precision that wine and spirits require and this is exactly where CarbonCloud excels. We model footprints from farm level all the way to the shelf, which is essential for a category where so much sits in agriculture and packaging. We have put particular effort into the data behind glass and other packaging. And a growing network of wine and spirits producers is now active on the platform, which means that when a company invites its suppliers, much of the groundwork may already be done.

Just as important, the industry is moving toward shared standards for how this data is calculated and exchanged. CarbonCloud is part of that work, so the footprints LFE builds are designed to travel across the value chain rather than sit in a silo. For LFE, that depth was the deciding factor.

“What gave us real confidence in CarbonCloud was the depth of their work in wine. Many of our suppliers are already on the platform, which reduces the effort for them significantly. And that is crucial, because only if we get the full value chain to cooperate on this, can we achieve something meaningful!”

Marcel KerkmeesterManaging Director, LFE

What’s next

LFE is starting with an initial set of products and will expand from there, bringing more suppliers onto the platform and deepening primary data over time. The goal is simple: better data leading to better choices, and a clear story to tell suppliers and customers about what the company is doing and why.

“LFE is exactly the kind of partner we want to build with: a serious player leaning into the climate challenge rather than waiting for it. Piece by piece we are building a strong consortium across the European alcohol industry, and LFE joining makes it stronger. I could not be happier to welcome them.”

David BryngelssonFounder and CEO, CarbonCloud

If you work in wine or spirits and are facing the same Scope 3 question, this is exactly the problem we built CarbonCloud to solve.