AJ Products was founded in 1975 by 19-year-old Anders Johansson, who started a materials handling business in his parents’ basement in Hyltebruk, a small town in southwest Sweden.
Today it employs more than 1,500 people, has offices in 19 countries – including Ireland – and more than 14,500 products, from school furniture to warehouse shelving, all designed to make its customers’ day to day working life easier.
This also includes a growing range of active office furniture, including affordable sit/stand desks, designed to counteract the long hours many of us traditionally spend sitting while at work.
Combining the best in Scandinavian design with sustainable materials, the company is certified with the highest quality and environmental standards ISO 9001 and 14001 and manufactures much of its product range itself in its two European factories, in Poland and Slovakia, many crafted from its own sustainably-managed forests.
It was the first supplier on the market to develop a range of furniture carrying the Nordic Swan Ecolabel, specifically designed for schools and preschools, and chosen by AJ Products because it sets the strictest requirements. The certification ensures the entire production chain from forest to finished product and end of life recycling is all carefully controlled for environmental protection.
The company’s long-standing commitment to sustainability was part of the appeal for Anita Falkenek, when she joined the company in 2023 as sustainability manager.
A biologist and ecotoxicologist by training, she already had a successful career developing and implementing sustainability strategies at executive level for a number of organisations. That includes five years as chief executive of KRAV, the Swedish sustainability labelling system for food.
Beyond compliance
Falkenek was in Dublin recently to speak at Positive Impacts, a key event in the sustainability calendar, to discuss the ways in which businesses can find practical, sustainable solutions to their workplace equipment needs, to tackle climate change and comply with burgeoning regulations.
The need to build on sustainability measures is something AJ Products has deep experience in, constantly running the slide rule over its internal operational practices with a view to ensuring continuous improvement.
“For many years AJ has understood the need to accelerate its sustainability work. With new legislation coming in, it needed to make sure it had a structure, policies, and a strategy in place, which is where I came in,” she explains.
The aim is to go beyond compliance and make as positive impact an impact as possible on all its stakeholders – including customers, employees and suppliers.
Circularity is the way forward
Falkenek is overseeing a big drive for circular solutions that help to reduce material consumption, lower climate emissions and reduce waste at AJ Products.
The company has developed a strategy that ensures that from design, to manufacturing, through to use and end of life recycling, circularity is integrated at every stage of the process.
That includes specifying recycled and recyclable materials as much as possible when manufacturing, and designing products to ensure it they are easy to disassemble into their component parts at the end.
The company has massively increased its inventory of spare parts, making it easier to repair and reuse products rather than bin them.
Today it has more than 4,000 spare parts available to extend the life of its products. “If you think of an office chair, for example, it means you can just replace the seat, or the wheels,” to make an item like new again, she explains.
Reducing material consumption, utilising more renewable and recycled materials, and eliminating hazardous substances in its products are key aspects of its continuous improvement efforts.
The company recently introduced a new material portal to collect and verify documentation of the materials in its products. This strengthens its ability to substitute materials, track their usage, calculate climate impact and meet various labelling criteria.
The number of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for products manufactured in its factories is on the rise too. For environmental assessments, it developed its own software, allowing it to deliver life cycle analyses and EPDs for a greater range of products.
The more it recycles and sorts, the less waste it generates, reducing the amount sent to incineration and landfill.
The company works with its supplier base too, holding them to high standards through its supplier code and conducting continuous risk assessments focused on environmental impact, social responsibility and business ethics.
Circular services
Thanks to expertise in this area, the company can provide circular services to their customers too, the next stage in its development.
That includes a range of offerings, from providing second hand stock, to take-back services for old furniture, to providing repair services, such as changing the top of a used work desk rather than replacing a whole new one.
It is developing innovative product-as-a-service (PAAS) solutions for items such as lockers, reducing the capital expenditure requirements for clients. It is also forging innovative partnerships, such as its work with Norwegian firm Secundo, a leading European ‘recommerce’ marketplace.
“If, for example, we bring back 200 chairs from a big office, Secundo can help us resell them on its second-hand site, and also repairs broken products,” she explains.
Part of the reason AJ Products supported Positive Impacts was because of the opportunity it provided to network with like-minded companies here looking for sustainable solutions, she says.
If you are accelerating your own sustainability programme, the first step is stakeholder engagement.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of company you are, or what industry you are in, start your sustainability journey with stakeholder dialogue, so that you understand both the risks and the opportunities facing all your stakeholders, from customers to suppliers to your neighbours,” she advises.
“That will help you find out what topics are most important for your company, whether that is climate or business ethics, IT security or transport. From that will trickle down the most important sustainability topics to work on first, allowing you to set goals and actions,” she says.
Remember, while there are commercial opportunities for those who get sustainability right, it is important to work together with other companies, even competitors, to achieve this.
“These are global challenges we are trying to solve, and every company cannot solve them alone,” she says.
“Circularity is something we need to co-operate with other sectors and even other competitors to achieve. It’s about co-operation and competition.”
AJ Produkter is proud to announce that they are now a member of the United Nations Global Compact initiative. AJ Products are a proud bronze winner of Ecovadis 2025
