AEGIR-Marine’s road to B Corp
Ever since its founding, AEGIR-Marine has always been a company that likes to do things better and differently. This relates to the quality of its products and its levels of customer service. But this is also the case for the company’s sustainability ambitions.
“It’s fair to say that sustainability has always been a part of AEGIR-Marine,” begins Sustainability Manager Rob de Wit. “Over the years, since the beginning of the company in 2000, we have implemented numerous sustainable initiatives throughout the company: making our offices more efficient, reducing energy use, implementing employee development programmes, and launching community support projects. This was just part of how we did business.”
With the aim of giving these sustainable values more structure and value within the company, AEGIR-Marine discovered the B Corp movement, the comprehensive approach of which appealed to the AEGIR team.
Watch out for carbon tunnel vision
“When companies embark on increasing their sustainability, there is a sincere risk of a carbon tunnel vision,” Rob adds. “This is when all efforts are aimed at reducing carbon emissions. However, the danger is that this one single aspect, results in a blind eye to other unsustainable activities.”
B Corp takes a different, more holistic path to sustainability. “It's not only about the environment. It covers all kinds of subjects: the people, the community, everything that is related to your company.” This reflects the diverse definition of sustainability as seen from the United Nations’ seventeen sustainable development goals.
Connecting with the team
In November 2023, AEGIR-Marine gave itself a rather tight deadline: to apply for B Corp certification on 1 September 2024, just nine months later.
Working with several colleagues, as well as third consultants from Been MC and Swellworks (Nikaj van Tiel), Rob started on the sizeable task of gathering all the information required to answer the huge number of questions required for the B Corp assessment process. Needless to say, this turned out to be a team effort, requiring input from every department from all the company’s twelve offices around the world. Having worked for the company for 17 years, including 5 years training new colleagues at the AEGIR-Marine Academy, Rob already knew everyone he needed help from. “Because of this connection, it was easier to talk with people, make them aware and enthusiastic about our journey to B Corp,” he says.
AEGIR-Marine’s application for B Corp certification (delivered within the self-imposed deadline, by the way) demonstrates Rob’s earlier point of how a sustainable way of working has been baked into the company’s very being for the last 25 years.
“Of all the information that we had to provide for our B Corp application, the majority was based on existing mate we already had in place. For example, we didn’t have to change our DNA, this is who we are, this is what we do.”
Rob received the news that AEGIR-Marine was now a certified B Corp on 8 October 2025. With 91.2 points out a minimum of 80, he is pleased with the results but he is already looking ahead for ways of improvements.
“We scored well on the first three topics of B Corp: Governance, Workers and Customers. This shows that we are a very strong and well organised company. Our employees around the world are treated well. Our customers are looked after. The remaining two topics of Environment and Community, so what we do for the planet and within our supply chain, is where we score relatively lower.”
“This will be our target for the coming years: to improve in these areas while not losing attention for the other three topics. The coming two years will be hard, but doable: I have confidence in our team in making the necessary changes. After all, we are just doing what we believe we should do.”