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Auping's Circular Journey: Creation is only the drop - Collaboration creates the ripples!

Last updated: Sep 22, 2022

Summary

ABOUT AUPING

Royal Auping, the largest independent bed manufacturer in the Netherlands, has 303 full time employees and 322 flexible workers from over 40 countries. Auping’s goal is to make high-quality durable beds with a lifelong guarantee, which has remained core to the company’s strategy. Since its founding in 1888, Auping has remained a family business and prioritised its social commitment (both to its workers and the larger community). This is reflected in the company’s social fund scheme, which includes financial emergency support for its employees and their families. Such a social foundation is critical to understanding the company’s DNA of being socially minded and sustainable.

The company was initially founded to help hospitals locate suitable mattresses for their patients. So, how has the company, which is now more than 130 years old, continued to remain relevant? By being masterful in innovation! Auping has continuously adapted its products to be more sustainable: it received a B Corporation Certification (marking it as a business that assesses the balance between purpose and profits), which solidified its reputation as a circular economy industry leader in the Netherlands.

OPPORTUNITY FOR HRM IN AUPING

1. Auping’s incremental upskilling of employees results in them gaining unique and rich industry expertise. However, establishing a knowledge management system is critical to ensure this valuable knowledge is retained and shared within the company as well as external parties and can serve as in-house training, an extension of its licensing scheme or as an entirely new business proposition for higher education, vocational school or industry professionals.

2. One of Auping’s main challenges is to ensure the pioneering and enthusiastic spirit is kept alive. Amid the growing global uncertainty and as the company furthers its circular ambitions, ensuring employees’ sense of security and wellbeing becomes a critical opportunity in the successful delivery of its ambitions. HRM has the opportunity to showcase its commitment to the worker’s morale and wellbeing by encouraging honest conversations with employees, assisting and motivating workers who are struggling and ensuring that overall morale at the company is stable, despite the hard times.

Solution

AUPING’S CIRCULAR JOURNEY

Driven by the 1.5 million incinerated or discarded mattresses a year in the Netherlands alone, and the complex composition of glued materials (which makes it difficult to reuse), Auping’s circular journey was initiated and promoted by Jan-Joost Bosman, its CEO. The company strives to reduce waste—stopping the incineration of used mattresses and the loss of valuable raw materials while developing an easy-to-disassemble and recycle mattress. All of the materials in Auping’s mattresses can be reused to develop new, fresh mattresses. As Auping has a strong social foundation, focused on providing optimal working and social conditions for its employees, the transition to circularity has been a reconciliation of both sustainability and its founding social component.

Within Auping, the idea for a circular mattress originated as early as 2010. Auping then developed a long-term vision and strategy to transition toward a Cradle-to-Cradle philosophy to produce the world’s first circular mattress. Developing the strategy was sequential and incremental, including the inclusion of circular metrics in the company’s KPIs. The initial challenge was understanding how to produce the mattress and comprehending the required skills needed to develop the circular mattress. The subsequent step was to implement incremental changes to its production based on three main principles:

1. Manufacture from 100% reusable materials,

2. Minimal use of fossil fuels and increased reliance on renewable energy,

3. Keep employee wellbeing central to operations.

Outcome

In 2020, with technology co-development partner Niaga, Auping designed the world’s first fully circular mattress: the Auping Evolve. Its circular mattress now represents 85% of the company’s total mattress production. And as demand grows, the company has begun expanding its circular mattress range.It aims to be fully circular by 2030 at the latest. In May 2022, Auping launched two premium circular mattresses, the Auping Elysium and Auping Elite. It also trialled a Product-as-a-Service circular business offering:, its Bedzzzy Sleep Subscription service. Due to limited consumer interest this service was recently discontinued.

Keeping the circular momentum going, summer 2023 will see the Auping Evolve become customizable and its production become automated and robotically produced in a pilot production line in Deventer, the Netherlands. By scaling up its production, it will be able to reduce the mattress's unit cost. Since the costs will still be higher than standard mattress production, Auping has taken the radical step of offering its circular mattress innovation in licence form to its competitors.

“Financing our circular mattress? The first steps are always more expensive…but that is part of a longer-running business case. And essential! It's not just about making your products sustainable, but also your company! Circular business models make your company future-proof.”

- Martijn Aalders - Director HR