In 2015, an initial energy audit was initiated at Oskar Frech, and a year later a lean project with Staufen was launched. Since then, sustainability and process optimization have been consistently linked. Is this also a financially successful combination?
It pays off in more ways than one. Just a few years ago, we were emitting around 2,800 tons of greenhouse gases every year with our three plants. Now our emissions are zero. At the same time, our electricity costs fell from around one million euros a year to 650,000 euros now, albeit at a significantly higher cost per kilowatt hour. Extrapolated to the current price level, our electricity bill today would be 2.5 million euros per year. Thanks to a combined heat and power plant, PV systems, energy-related renovations, optimized production, and smaller savings such as the switch to LED lighting fixtures, we have been able to significantly reduce the amount of electricity we purchase. In addition, we have been purchasing CO2-neutral electricity since 2020. This means that we are now already producing in a climate-neutral manner in Scope 1 and Scope 2, and by 2030 we want to achieve this mark in Scope 3 as well, i.e. including indirect emissions from the supply chain.
Many companies are planning far-reaching sustainability projects, but the Staufen study "Green Transformation in Mechanical and Plant Engineering" shows: Only one in three companies actually gets it right. How do you manage to implement it?
We started with an energy audit to find out where we stand and what we need to develop. On this basis, we then set up and expanded a small energy management team with managers, department heads and executives. The first step was to gather information and identify potential. To do this, we brought the apprentices on board as "energy scouts," for example. Among other things, they took compressed air measurements and pointed out where there were leaks. We then worked through the list piece by piece. These were only small beginnings, but it already saved us 100,000 euros a year. And a more recent, larger project is a combined heatand power plant that has already paid for itself within two years. At the same time, we bought two electric Smarts for trips between the plants.