Hagar: Group-wide data infrastructure for Iceland’s most complex retail group
How one of Iceland’s largest and most diversified companies turned fragmented operational data into a trusted, group-wide foundation — and why that precision compounds year after year.
10 businesses. 100+ locations. 3,500+ employees.
Hagar is not a single company. It is a family of businesses, Bónus, Hagkaup, Olís, ÓB, Aðföng, Bananar, Stórkaup, Zara, Eldum rétt, and most recently P/F SMS in the Faroe Islands. Over 100 locations. More than 3,500 employees of 60 nationalities. Operations spanning Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Netherlands. A supply chain that stretches from banana plantations in Central America to fuel terminals in the North Atlantic.
Managing one of these businesses well is hard. Managing all of them, and understanding their collective operational footprint with enough precision to satisfy investors, meet regulatory expectations and benchmark progress year over year, requires something most companies do not have: a single, reliable source of truth across the entire group.
Klappir provides that infrastructure for Hagar.
Complexity without a shared structure
Retail at the scale and diversity of Hagar generates data from hundreds of sources simultaneously. Energy meters across 100-plus stores, warehouses and fuel stations. Refrigeration systems across multiple brands. Vehicle fleets serving different distribution models. Food waste flows from perishable supply chains. Air, sea and road freight crossing multiple borders.
The problem isn’t the volume of data. It’s that data from 100-plus locations with different operating models has no shared structure, so it can’t be compared, verified or trusted.
Managing this in spreadsheets, collating invoices from dozens of service providers, reconciling figures across subsidiaries, it doesn’t just create inefficiency. It produces data that cannot be trusted, targets that cannot be tracked, and reports that cannot be assured.
One platform for the whole group
Hagar has used Klappir’s Sustainability Platform as the operational backbone of its group-wide data accounting since 2018. All GHG emissions calculations across the full Hagar group, Scope 1, 2 and 3, are managed through the platform, in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
This is not a reporting layer placed on top of existing systems. It is the GHG accounting system itself.
Data flows in from service providers, where emissions factors are applied, where scope boundaries are maintained, where year-on-year comparisons are produced, and where the audit trail is held. When Hagar’s independent auditors provided limited assurance on the group’s GHG figures, energy data and workforce metrics in 2024, that assurance rested on the quality and traceability of the data held in Klappir.
The standardized data foundation also makes it possible to expand the scope and precision of measurement year over year. In 2024, 75% of Hagar’s procurement emissions were calculated using weight-based methodology, up from 53% in 2023. That shift only becomes possible when the underlying data infrastructure can support it. End-of-life emissions from sold food products were added to the GHG inventory for the first time in 2024. Each year, the picture gets more complete.
The results
Precision that compounds
Emissions
Total group GHG emissions in 2024
Freight & Supply Chain
Reduction in air freight emissions since 2022
Waste
Reduction in disposal volumes (1,516t in 2023 → 350t in 2024)
Location-Level Visibility
Named among top 8 Icelandic companies in PwC’s Sustainability Index 2024 — for accuracy and ambition of reporting
“Hagar has been using the measurements from Klappir’s Sustainability Platform since 2018 with great results. The platform enables us to gather the information we need to publish the NASDAQ ESG guidelines in a secure and simple way, and furthermore, the platform is the basis for us to set measurable goals when it comes to reducing waste in energy, water, heating and fuel.”
Infrastructure that scales with the business
The data infrastructure scales with the business. Each expansion in scope, new subsidiaries, more precise methodologies, additional emissions categories, becomes possible because the foundation is already in place.
Hagar has set a target of at least 60% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. That target was set with confidence because the baseline is audited and the trend is tracked. That’s what the platform is built to provide.
Common questions
What teams most often ask about this story.
Yes. All GHG emissions calculations across the full Hagar group are managed through Klappir, in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. When Hagar’s independent auditors provided limited assurance on the group’s GHG figures in 2024, that assurance rested on the quality and traceability of data held in the platform.
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