How One Frio Runs ESG Due Diligence on Every Acquisition
One Frio has acquired six cold storage businesses across the Netherlands and Ireland: Grolleman, NedCool, Coenen, McCulla, Granville, and KOG Logistics. Every one went through the same financial, operational, and technical review. Every one also went through a structured ESG assessment, completed before the deal closed rather than after. For a temperature-controlled warehouse, that sequencing matters for a practical reason. Energy is one of the largest controllable costs in the building. The data that shows how a site performs on emissions is the same data that shows where operating margin sits. ESG due diligence and commercial due diligence read from one set of meters.
Energy is the first number One Frio reads
In cold storage, environmental performance is measurable in cost terms from the first site visit. Refrigeration runs around the clock, and a site's energy intensity, usually tracked as kWh per pallet position, sets both its carbon footprint and a large share of its cost base. Bringing that number down lowers emissions and operating cost in the same step. This is why energy leads One Frio's assessment, and why the improvements it identifies tend to pay back on their own terms rather than relying on a separate sustainability budget.
What good operators already do
The European cold storage market was built by family-owned businesses, many of them decades old.
They know their customers, their markets, and their plant. Most have run lean on energy for years, for the simple reason that electricity is one of their largest bills.
“Often reducing electricity consumption is also interesting from a monetary point of view because it saves some cash. The above-and-beyond initiatives you see at large multinational companies aren't necessarily what you would expect from a family-owned business with 50 or 100 employees.”
Loes Kip, ESG consultant supporting One Frio during acquisitions
One Frio's assessment starts from where each business actually is. A regional operator with 40 staff carries different constraints from a larger multi-site company, and the improvement plan reflects that.
The ESG due diligence One Frio runs
Every acquisition gets a structured ESG baseline before close. It sits alongside the financial, operational, and technical workstreams, and it covers the factors that carry real cost and risk in temperature-controlled logistics.
The baseline exists to set direction: where a business stands today, and which improvements are worth funding once it joins the platform. It gives One Frio a fuller read on the asset than the financials alone provide, and it flags the work that the next phase of ownership should pay for.
Where the value sits
Several of the largest ESG opportunities in cold storage are also the largest commercial ones.
Refrigerant transition. The HFC phase-down under European F-gas regulation tightens over the rest of the decade. Sites running older refrigerants face a compliance cost and a reliability risk at the same time. Planning the transition early controls both, and it removes a liability a future buyer would otherwise price in.
Energy and generation. Cold stores carry large, flat roofs and steady daytime demand, which suits onsite solar. Paired with modern controls and heat recovery on refrigeration plant, generation cuts the energy bill and the carbon number together, and it lowers exposure to volatile electricity prices.
Resilience. Cold stores hold critical food inventory. Protecting them against flooding and extreme weather safeguards that inventory, supports insurability, and lowers the cost of running the asset over its life.
A consistent standard across the platform
As One Frio grows, a common approach to energy, refrigerant management, and governance lets each site benefit from what the others have done. An efficiency measure proven at one facility informs the capex case at the next. Shared data shows where the next euro of investment earns the most.
One example is already underway: ISO 45001 health and safety certification underway across four sites, bringing them to a common standard. The result is a platform that improves site by site, with each acquisition raising the bar the others are held to.
Backing the businesses, keeping what works
One Frio buys businesses to build on them. The local knowledge, customer relationships, and operating discipline that made a business worth acquiring stay in place. ESG follows the same approach: understand what already works, fund what makes it stronger, and hold each site to a standard it can meet.
ESG is part of the due diligence on every One Frio acquisition, completed before the deal closes. How a business uses energy, manages its refrigerants, treats its people, and protects its assets gives a fuller read on what it is worth over time, and on where targeted capital improves both the site and the platform.