Commitment to sustainability and environmental protectionRenewable energy

1. Green energy supply

As part of our external energy supply, we are fully reliant on certified green energy with proof of origin for all our plants in Germany. This is how we ensure that the amount of energy we need is fed into the grid from exclusively sustainable sources and that the the legally prescribed environmental standards are observed in the process. In addition to externally sourcing green energy, our own expansion of renewable energy offers an opportunity to achieve a decentralised energy supply. In a decentralised energy supply, power is generated locally. This reduces transmission losses and increases independence from fossil fuel-based primary energy sources.

2. Use of electromobility

A key approach in our energy management system is the expansion of electromobility. Our employees* can pay a small fee to borrow various models of electric vehicles from our fleet at the Rommelsdorf site for business or private trips. To provide our employees with even greater access to electromobility, on our 60-year company anniversary in 2021, we also raffled off a total of 30 VW ID3 electric vehicles to our employees around the globe. The winners had access to the vehicles for 24 months, with all costs incurred being assumed by our company.

3. Installation of photovoltaic systems

The roofs of our production halls offer the perfect opportunity to use the sun’s energy to supply the company with power. Therefore, all structurally suitable roofs will be fitted with photovoltaic systems in future. This will provide us with an additional source of renewable energy and allow us to refrain from obtaining energy from external and often unsustainable sources. The project began at the start of 2022 with the installation of the first photovoltaic system on the roof of Production Hall VI at our company headquarters in Rommelsdorf. Using the system covers approximately 5% of the total power requirements of the Rommelsdorf site. We are planning to equip further sites in Germany and abroad with photovoltaic systems as comprehensively as possible. At the national level, the Rommelsdorf site will be followed by the planned logistics and distribution centre in Elsenroth, which, following its structural completion in 2023, will be fitted with this technology on all roofs. Our branch in Mawson Lakes, a suburb of the Australian city of Adelaide, is the first of our international production sites where a photovoltaic system was put into operation over the course of 2022. The express goal is to install photovoltaic systems everywhere in the world where this is structurally possible at the individual sites in order to establish our own sustainable sources of energy to ensure the company’s independent power supply.

The company’s expansion of renewable energy is all the more important as the transport and heating sectors come to be fuelled by electricity in place of combustion fuels in the future. We are thus also continuously accelerating the use of renewable energy and constantly searching for additional opportunities to use it in our company.