Five things we learned from Renta Group’s sustainability report

Renta Group is now one of Europe’s biggest rental companies, with revenues of more than €550 million (US$623 million) and operations in eight countries (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Sweden).

The company, which last year appointed its first head of sustainability, has been publishing sustainability reports since 2021 - before any legal requirements to file them came into force. This year, in line with the EU’s recently introduced Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the company has gone even further and published a comprehensive appraisal of its CSR plans 

As such, Renta’s recently-published annual sustainability report provides a useful template for what rental companies should be doing.

Here are a few points that we’ve extracted from the report.

1. Renta is evaluating its suppliers

Renta Group sent Supplier Assessment Questionnaires to all of its significant suppliers for the first time in 2024. That effort included on-site audits of suppliers with “high-risk factors” using a third-party auditor.

Renta said; “We recognise that the performance of our suppliers has a direct and immediate impact on Renta’s organisational performance, including our sustainability performance…we intend to find ways together with our suppliers to uncover potential and to develop strengths, as well as solutions and alternatives for existing weaknesses that need to be developed.”

2. It wants more women in its workforce

The company hopes to recruit more women and develop female representation at all levels of its business. It has set targets for the end of 2026. By the end of that year, it aims for 20% of its total workforce to be female, up from 10% in 2024.

Photo: Renta Group

The company also wants 10% of its management team to be female by the same date – there are currently no women in the senior team. At board level, it wants half of the members to be women, up from a third last year.

“Research consistently demonstrates that achieving an even gender distribution in the workplace contributes to development and success”, said the report.

3. More green power and better ‘Scope 3’ data collection

By the end of 2026, Renta wants all the electricity used at its depots to be ‘green’ or produced locally by solar power. It aims for 95% of its power consumption to be green by the end of next year.

It also aims to have at least 90% of its depots certified to ISO 14001 by the end of 2026. The current figure is 59%.

Some 68% of Renta’s greenhouse gas emissions come under the Scope 3 category, which is dominated by the use of its rental equipment by customers. It wants to increase the accuracy of the data it collects on carbon emissions from its fleet and to that end is increasing further the number of machines equipped with telematics technology.

The company said that increasing the accuracy of the data it collects on carbon emissions is an important goal; “significant year-over-year variations may reflect improved data collection rather than purely operational changes,” it said.

“We view this data quality improvement positively, recognising that accurate data is essential for transparently demonstrating reductions and other changes.”

4. A fatal accident has prompted action

Renta Group suffered a fatality during 2024, something that isn’t avoided in its sustainability report. A sub-contracted worker fell during an operation to move a weather protection structure. An investigation found that safety regulations were not fully followed, with double harness hooks not fastened at the time of the accident.

“This tragic loss is deeply felt throughout our organisation”, said the report, “We are committed to learning from this event, improving our practices, and doing everything possible to prevent such an accident from ever happening again.”

In response, the company has revised its safety instructions for scaffolding and weather protection installations, enhanced its worksite supervision policy, and provided additional mandatory training for workers and subcontractors in six languages.

As part of its wider health and safety programme – not related to the incident described above - Renta wants more than 90% of its depots to be certified to ISO 45001 by the end of 2026, up from the current 59%. The 45001 standard concerns occupational health and safety.

5. What is a Double Materiality Assessment (DMA)?

DMA is likely to become a better-known phrase in the coming years. It refers to a way of measuring sustainability in terms of, first, an ‘impact materiality assessment’, which concerns a company’s own impacts on the environment and wider society, and second, a ‘financial materiality assessment’, looking at how external sustainability-related events - examples being extreme weather or new regulations – impact on its financial performance.

The aim of this is to allow Renta to understand the risks and opportunities involved in sustainability and to prioritise its actions.

The DMA approach is being adopted widely by large businesses in Europe, because it is a requirement of the EU’s corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD). It applies to companies with revenues exceeding €450 million (US$510 million) or listed companies.