The environment
Protecting our natural resources is important to us, which is why we aim to continuously reduce the environmental impact of our actions. Everyone is called to step up: from sales and applications engineers to administration and the management team. All of us work toward the goals of resource conservation and sustainable stewardship.
More green on the shop floor
HEIDENHAIN products help our customers to increase their productivity and reduce their CO2 emissions: The high-performance functions of our CNC controls shorten non-productive time and boost efficiency during machining, resulting in higher throughput and a smaller carbon footprint per finished part. And improved sensor optics in our encoders eliminate the need for purge air, thus reducing the CO2 footprint of these feedback devices by up to 99% during operation.
Sustainable business processes
Consuming less and promoting biodiversity: Energy and various raw materials go into making our products on over 63,000 sqm of manufacturing space at our headquarters in Traunreut. We take a variety of measures to reduce our consumption of raw materials and energy, and to continuously optimize our material usage. During our manufacturing processes, recycling also plays a prominent role. And across our grounds, we endeavor to both preserve and increase biodiversity.
The core environmental goals of HEIDENHAIN headquarters in Germany starting in 2024
Expanding green energy
We already rely on a variety of ecologically sustainable energy sources: solar, geothermal and wind. To continue expanding their role at HEIDENHAIN, we are installing more photovoltaic panels, using more geothermal energy in manufacturing processes and planning two company-owned wind turbines.
Consuming less energy
We are implementing various improvements within our Production department, such as switching to LED lights, optimizing our compressed air lines, reducing the air line pressure and installing heat recovery systems. To uncover even more energy-saving opportunities, we will also be expanding our energy monitoring capabilities.
Reducing emissions
We are implementing various projects in our manufacturing departments aimed at further reducing our CO2 emissions. Relying more on district heating is one of them. And through extensive heat-loss prevention measures and the use of regenerative energy sources, new buildings will be as CO2-neutral as possible.
Conserving water
As part of the surface-finishing processes in our Mechanical Components Production department, our products undergo a final cleaning step. By acquiring and implementing a new, resource-efficient cleaning system, we will be reducing the amount of wastewater that contains cleaning solution by approximately 50%.
Reducing hazardous materials
Solvents are a necessary part of the cleaning process within our Mechanical Components Production department. We aim to increasingly use water to clean our products, thereby reducing our use of solvents by 25%. In our Glass Processing department, we are also moving away from coolant containing boric acid.
Eco-friendly packaging
We aim to reduce our consumption of packaging material! To do so, we are putting new packaging equipment into operation, lowering the amount of plastic in our packaging and relying more on endless cardboard instead of cardboard panels. We are also switching from combined foam-cardboard packaging to pure cardboard.
