There are many areas where Steinemann is now taking action to improve sustainability.

For our machines, we can offer sanding motors with higher energy efficiency ratings as an alternative to conventional drive systems. For the technically minded, this means that energy efficiency at nominal power improves from level IE3 to IE4. While these IE4-class motors are of course a little more expensive, they offer a return on investment even over the medium term by saving energy and therefore reducing the customer’s overall running costs.

Our belts are manufactured in Turkey to tough international standards like DIN EN ISO 14001, for example, which is the standard for environmental management. Our Turkish partner is also a member of the SEAM program – an industry model for sustainability in the European sanding sector. This program is funded by FEPA. FEPA is the Federation of European Producers of Abrasives and counts more than 80 percent of abrasives companies in Europe among its members – from SMEs to major multinationals. Together, these companies produce around 90 percent of European abrasives, export around 35 percent of these worldwide.

During the ISO 14001 certification process, auditors will be looking at a company’s measures to reduce resource usage, and to reclaim and recycle (waste) materials. This is also why some of the packaging material that we use at our facilities in Turkey and China is manufactured from recycled material. In the case of partial deliveries of our inserts from China, we also make our own pallets from existing waste materials that we have to hand.

We also make use of renewable energy, both to heat our company buildings (provided from a district heating grid) and to provide electrical power – which we source from our in-house photovoltaic system. This “power from sunshine” we generate ourselves is not only fed into our own building grid but is also used to supply electricity to charge our employee EVs. We’ve set up ten of these charging points, which are very popular with our staff.