"For us, it's important to prioritize sustainability issues. As a steel industry company, we have opportunities to make an impact," Edwin Grönkvist states, who has been working as Global Sustainability Manager at Suzuki Garphyttan since April 2023.
Edwin's global sustainability responsibilities include defining and managing both growing legislation and customer requirements. It also includes coordination and governance so that Suzuki Garphyttan achieves its set goals.
Diverse conditions – unified goals
For a global company, sustainability work poses certain challenges. For example, Suzuki Garphyttan's factories have different conditions depending on their location in the world.
“Despite the differences, we have set common global goals together”, Edwin says, but we also have site-specific goals that take into account local variations.
Suzuki Garphyttan aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent from 2020 to 2030, eliminate hazardous substances from production, improve recycling, and reduce water usage.
"Regarding social sustainability, we have goals related to a good working environment and a safe workplace", Edwin shares.
"For economic sustainability, we aim for 50 percent of our turnover to come from areas other than the conventional automotive industry. "
New standard offers many advantages
In 2023, Edwin focused on mapping out legal requirements and assessing how well the company meets them. As the new standardized reporting CSRD is introduced in the EU, Edwin welcomes a clear standard to work with:
“I believe that CSRD can offer great advantages for our customers who more easily will be able to access relevant information.”
New hardening technology for export
A new hardening technology that helps Suzuki Garphyttan phase out environmentally hazardous substances from production, while also enabling a more energy-efficient process, is an example of an ongoing initiative.
"We have started implemented a line at the site in Suzhou China, and it will also be rolled out at our other sites."
Several initiatives are ongoing throughout Suzuki Garphyttan´s sites. For example, oil boilers are being replaced with fossil-free energy sources in Sweden, an energy efficiency program is being implemented in the USA factory, waste management is being improved in Mexico, and the site in Leeds, England, has a project aimed at extending the life of the oil used in production.
For Suzuki Garphyttan, the direction is clear: we aim to be the sustainability benchmark in the steel wire industry and contribute to a better tomorrow.