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Our sustainability themes

Sustainability

Sustainability along the entire value chain

Sustainability is an essential part of SEW-EURODRIVE A/S’s strategy and daily actions. It affects the entire value chain within the company: people, products and services, supply and raw material chains, assembly and business processes as well as ethics and governance.

Our commitment to sustainability is driven by our belief that people are the heart of everything we do. Whether in sales, engineering, assembly or service.

For more information, also see our sustainability report.

Our sustainability strategy for today and for the future

People


Products and services


Supply and raw material chains


Production and business processes


Ethics and governance


Our approach to sustainability

Sustainability is one of our values, built into our daily management and strategy. We are guided by the 17 global sustainability goals: “Sustainable Development Goals” of the United Nations. As part of this long-term sustainability initiative, we aim to gradually and consistently safeguard resources, lower CO2 emissions, and thus optimize our entire value chain.

UN Global Compact

1. People make the difference

People are the key to the success of our company. Whether in assembly, sales or service – people are at the heart of everything. Our company culture is characterized by the reciprocal trusting, respect, and valuing of one another.

By introducing countless measures related to occupational health management and both basic and further training, we keep levels of motivation high and make sure our employees identify strongly with our company.

One of our top priorities is to provide our employees a healthy and safe working environment. We encourage our employees to develop occupational safety. We also provide continuous training for employees and jointly identify areas in need of development in the work environment.

2. Products and services

As a leading drive technology company SEW-EURODRIVE sees innovation as a decisive factor for its sustainable approach to developing products, systems,and services. The modular concept behind our products is one of the most important reasons for their success and also contributes significantly to sustainability by reducing stock and increasing stock turnover rate

By maximizing energy efficiency at the concept development stage, we aim to make our drive solutions as economical as possible A good example of this are the inverters in the latest generation of our MOVI‑C® modular automation system.

Sustainable Life Cycle Services

Our Life Cycle Services covers the entire service lifespan of a product while it is in use with the customer. Life Cycle Services encompass services, tools and resources throughout the entire system life cycle.

3. Supply and raw material chains

"Act global – think and buy local."

We aim to minimize our carbon footprint and maintain a healthy supply chain through the use of our global network. This will ensure that the procurement of raw materials, as well as our products and solutions, are located as close as possible to both our sites and our customers. By keeping transportation routes short in this way, we will reduce our CO2 emissions and minimize the amount of packaging involved.

4. Production and Business processes

How much CO2 does a drive solution from SEW‑EURODRIVE generate?

We only have limited access to figures from our customers, as we are dependent on the companies in question telling us about the conditions in which their solutions are being used. This is relevant information as more than 95% of the total CO2 emissions associated with our gearmotors comes from operations, based on an average lifetime of approx. 15-20 years.

Although it is challenging to determine the carbon footprint of our solutions that are actually in use, we are making good progress when it comes to calculating the annual carbon footprint associated with the energy and electricity consumption of our production.

We aim to enhance our efficiency across individual areas by ensuring our assembly processes are ideally coordinated. Among other initiatives we are adopting a smart approach to the digitalization of our business.

5. Ethics and governance

The high quality of our products and solutions is matched by a high benchmark in ethical guidelines and standards. We believe that ethics and governance are about more than just abiding by applicable laws and global human rights. As part of SEW-EURODRIVE Group, these standards are very close to our heart, whether in terms of occupational health and safety, a corporate code of conduct, or functional safety.

We observe and abide by all provisions and regulations in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which entered into force in 2018.

Our main sustainability focus areas

+ Increase our share of local assembly from 50% to 70%, thus reducing our CO2 footprint associated with transportation of assembled gearmotors correspondingly

+ Help our customers select solutions with a lower CO2 footprint through energy consulting during the sales process

+ Extend the life of our products promoting CDM, preventive maintenance, remanufacturing and retrofit thus helping our customers save CO2

Your sustainability partner

Our commitment to sustainability is driven by our belief that people are the heart of everything we do. Whether in sales, engineering, assembly or service.

Further information

Our sales team is happy to tell you more about our sustainability themes and actions.