International News

Corporate Responsibility: Voith Publishes Sustainability Report 2021/2022

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  • Report highlights the sustainability strategy, Voith’s own social and environmental sustainability, as well as the sustainability of Voith’s products at customer sites
  • Voith Paper’s Papermaking for Life programme contributes to more sustainable paper production
  • Water and energy consumption as well as waste volumes at Voith sites significantly reduced over the last 10 years

The Voith Group has published the 13th edition of its annual Sustainability Report for the fiscal year 2021/2022. The focus is on the sustainability strategy, resource efficiency and employee safety in the company’s own activities. In addition, the Sustainability Report shows how Voith products and services help customers worldwide achieve their sustainability goals. “We want to make a measurable contribution to the sustainable development of the economy and the society,” explained Dr. Toralf Haag, CEO Voith Group. “To this end, we make our actions transparent and comprehensible through comprehensive reporting.”

In the paper industry, Voith Paper sets the standards in the area of resource-saving paper production. As part of its Papermaking for Life sustainability programme, the leading full-line supplier has set ambitious targets for 2030 to significantly improve its customers’ carbon footprint:

  • 100 per cent CO2-neutral paper production thanks to energy-optimized products, digital solutions, disruptive concepts and the efficient use of renewable energies
  • 90 per cent fresh water savings thanks to a completely new papermaking process
  • 90 per cent recycling rate thanks to the development of new fibre streams

In total, Voith paper invests around EUR100 million per year in the development of efficient and sustainable innovations. To drive decarbonization forward and realize CO2-neutral paper production by 2030, Voith Paper is focusing on four areas in its research and development work: Voith Paper is continuously optimizing its existing product portfolio to reduce energy consumption. One example here is the newly developed InduraClean (IDC) product family. Depending on the requirements, the focus of the modular cleaning technology can be placed on significantly increased production, energy reduction of up to 50 per cent or vastly improved separation efficiency. On the other hand, digital solutions ensure improved process efficiency with reduced shutdowns, which also reduced CO2 emissions. In order to realize CO2-neutral paper production by 2030, Voith Paper is also working with partners on disruptive concepts that have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by further 50 per cent. The fourth R&D area focuses on using renewable energies as efficiently as possible and identifying suitable storage options.

Strong focus on sustainability also in own activities
As a family-owned company, Voith also feels a particular responsibility to avoid environmental risks and to use resources responsibly in its own operations. The company’s commitment was confirmed by the independent rating agency ISS ESG, which again awarded Voith a premium rating of B- last year. This makes Voith one of the world’s top companies in plant and mechanical engineering.

Over the past 10 years (2011/12 – 2021/22), Voith sites have been able to reduce energy consumption by 34 per cent, water consumption by 44 per cent and waste volume by 38 per cent in relation to sales. In addition, all Voith locations worldwide have been climate-neutral since the beginning of 2022. Energy-saving and more efficient solutions were installed for this purpose. Voith also increased the share of renewable energies in the overall electricity mix by 38 per cent in the previous year to currently 80 per cent. In the same period, the company’s own photovoltaic and hydroelectric power plants helped generate 8.3 GWh of electricity themselves. As a result, the Voith Group was able to reduce greeenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40 per cent in fiscal 2021/2022 and voluntarily compensated for the remaining emissions. By 2049/2050, emissions that are currently unavoidable are also to be reduced to a minimum.

In addition to ecological sustainability, social responsibility is a top priority at Voith. Closely related to this are occupational safety and health protection for Voith employees. With the help of safe workplaces and processes, accidents and work-related illnesses are to be avoided to the greatest extent possible. Thanks to a comprehensive occupational safety programme, the number of workplace accidents in fiscal 2021/22 was reduced from 79 to 61 compared to the previous year. The frequency rate is therefore 1.6 (=number of occupational accidents per million hours worked). Voith is strongly focused on further reducing the number of occupational accidents to a minimum.

The Voith Sustainability Report 2022 contains many other examples, research and development areas, and projects examples that illustrate Voith’s commitment to sustainability. The Voith Sustainability Report is now available for download on the Voith website. In addition, you can find more information about Voith Paper’s sustainability programme Papermaking for Life here.

About Voith Group
The Voith Group is a global technology company. With its broad portfolio of systems, products, service and digital applications, Voith sets standards in the markets of energy, paper, raw materials and transport & automotive. Founded in 1867, the company today has around 21,000 employees, sales of EUR4.9 billion and locations in over 60 countries worldwide and is thus one of the larger family-owned companies in Europe.

The Group Division Voith Paper is part of the Voith Group. As the full-line supplier to the paper industry, it provide the largest range of technologies, services and products on the market and offers paper manufacturers holistic solutions from one source. The company’s continuous stream of innovations facilitates resource-conserving production and helps customers minimize their carbon footprint. With its leading automation products and digitalization solutions from the Papermaking 4.0 portfolio, Voith offers its customers state-of-the-art digital technologies to improve plant availability and efficiency for all sections of the production process.