Environment

As an international company, the BENTELER Group fulfills its responsibility for protecting the environment by designing sustainable production processes and continually improving them. Conservation of resources is part of the established business practice and as a corporate objective ranks on a par with maintaining the highest quality and safety standards.

BENTELER sees economic benefits and environmental aspects as closely intertwined, because anything that has a positive impact on the environment often makes economic sense. That’s how we constantly strive for more efficient manufacturing processes and develop sustainable technologies in close cooperation with our customers. In corporate practice, environmental protection is a cross-sector task that involves all BENTELER Group’s teams and locations. The scope of industrial responsibility is large. It ranges from water protection, immission control and waste management to energy management and emissions trading.The application of the existing management systems differs due to the different production conditions and products of the two divisions.

To guarantee effective protection of resources and the environment at our sites, the Automotive Division’s production sites and the Steel/Tube Division’s European production sites have certified environmental and/or energy management in accordance with ISO 14001 or ISO 50001. Furthermore, we have special expertise in environmental issues that are of outstanding importance in metal processing and high-temperature processes. In addition to classic environmental protection areas, such as the sensitive handling of groundwater and surface water resources, this also includes greenhouse gas accounting for participation in emissions rights trading.

The BENTELER Group aligns its activities with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. As part of the sustainability strategy developed in 2021 the BENTELER Group is currently preparing an SBTi validation of its emissions targets. We are pursuing a clear decarbonization strategy to make our value chain climate-neutral.

We have revised our Scope 1 and Scope 2 calculations and for the first time determined Scope 3 emissions for 2019 to 2021 at Group level in order to be able to implement effective packages of measures to reduce all emissions. The production-related CO2 emissions in the BENTELER Group result primarily from the combustion of natural gas to generate heat (Scope 1) and from the purchase of energy (Scope 2). The Scope 3 emissions were determined on the basis of an expenditure-based analysis.

Waste from BENTELER’s production activity is continuously recorded and analyzed. We differentiate between waste for recycling and landfill. Hazardous waste arises, for example, due to painting work carried out during production. Within the group, there are different reduction targets for the respective divisions in line with the various business activities. The goal is to reduce the following waste metrics by 6% by 2025 (base year 2019):

• Steel/Tube: Waste quantity per product unit
• Automotive: Waste volume in € million per site revenue

In order to further reduce the amount of waste, we are focusing on conducting more processes in a loop because the steel and aluminum components used by BENTELER are 100% recyclable. The Steel/Tube Division’s own electric steelworks only processes steel scrap and thus makes a significant contribution to the circular economy.

In the year under review, the volume of waste was reduced or the separation of waste was improved through various projects. One example of this is the purchase of a chip centrifuge for separating oil and metal chips at the Warburg plant.

Our goal is to conserve resources. Water is an important factor and also plays a crucial role in safe production processes. Particular attention is paid to countries such as Mexico, where we withdraw comparatively large amounts of water. BENTELER analyzed its sites using the World Resources Institute’s Water Risk Atlas and determined that 19 sites are located in areas of high or very high water stress. One of the BENTELER Group’s goals is therefore to reduce specific water withdrawals at these sites by 10% by 2030 (base year 2019). We are striving to extend this goal to sites less affected by water stress. To this end, we are currently examining technical options as part of scenario analyses extending to the years 2030 and 2040.

BENTELER uses water recirculation at a number of sites to reuse water in production processes. Wastewater is purified and then returned to the process water, reducing water extraction as well as costs. BENTELER monitors and analyzes water withdrawals at all its locations. Consumption through processes such as evaporation is not currently recorded for the entire group.