A Water Bottle Producer Fulfills Its Sustainability goals

Overview

Klean Kanteen is a leading producer of BPA-free, reusable bottles, cups, and canisters. Headquartered in Chico, California, Klean Kanteen primarily manufactures its products in Shenzhen and distributes to all seven continents.

As a certified B-corporation, Klean Kanteen relies on accessible data about the environmental impacts of its supply chain. Traditional freight forwarders provided little visibility into their data, and no estimates of their carbon emissions were available at the time of quote. This led to manual calculations and laborious reconciliation.

With Flexport, estimated CO2 emissions per shipment are available in one place, prior to booking. Klean Kanteen now makes decisions that better align with its mission more strategically and quickly.

How Klean Kanteen Found Flexport

One day in 2016, Klean Kanteen Sr. Supply Chain Manager Brett Renlund came across a blog post by Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen describing a Flexport initiative with the Harvard College Consulting Group to create an effective predictive emissions tool.

“Even though we had just gone through this big evaluation process and selected new freight forwarders, the work they were doing with carbon calculation piqued my interest, given our focus on sustainability. Things with our forwarders were going fine, but this demonstration of initiative and innovation really stood out to me, so I had my logistics manager look into it, and when he did, we were really impressed by the platform. We decided to give it a shot.”

The Flexport Difference

Once on-boarded onto the Flexport platform, Klean Kanteen got to evaluate the company side-by-side with its traditional freight forwarders. “That was the game changer. It didn’t take long before we were ready to switch the bulk of our freight to Flexport. It was a no-brainer,” notes Renlund.

The ability to manage the entire supply chain from one centralized place enables the Klean Kanteen team to work better, together. “Having everything accurate and at my fingertips allows me to work better with finance, demand planning and our warehouse team,” says Klean Kanteen Logistics Manager, Jim Guenza.

Ongoing Partnership

From a service perspective, Klean Kanteen feels connected to their Flexport operations squad. “Honestly, I love our team. They often know even more about our needs and our shipments than I do,” says Guenza. “There are always things that pop up in logistics; that’s the business. But with Flexport, I know they’re doing everything they can and I can see for myself in the product what’s happening. That peace of mind is huge.”

For Klean Kanteen, the ability to be deliberate in decision-making when it comes to environmental impacts is central to the company’s mission. “Last year we moved 1% of our freight by air, and that accounted for 30% of our carbon emissions,” says Renlund.

“Flexport helps us to plan better, and strategize to avoid air shipments whenever possible. That control makes all the difference in the world.”