Innovating timeless industries
We supply coated aluminium to customers in the mobility and building sectors: industries that are practically as old as humankind itself. Throughout history, people have built homes to protect themselves from the elements and sought mobility solutions for trade and exploration. Since the Industrial Revolution, modern technology has transformed the way we travel and build, significantly enhancing our quality of life. However, this progress has also increased our reliance on fossil fuels and non-circular materials such as plastics.
Transitioning from simple excellence to eco-friendly excellence
As the leading supplier of coated aluminium to the mobility and building industries, Euramax contributes to creating beautiful products: vehicles that give their users a home-from-home, and buildings that will impress visitors for years to come. Our products are used in a wide range of applications: from campervans and trucks, to airport facades. These varied solutions all have one thing in common: they’re a source of pride for their owners. At Euramax for Mobility, we’ve dedicated decades to contributing to the creating a great experience for our customers and providing them with an additional reason to be proud of their purchase.
As our awareness of the importance of taking care of our environment has increased, our focus has expanded beyond simply delivering a high-quality product. Our customers, and consumers in general care more than ever about the well-being of our planet and safeguarding our resources for future generations. And so do we. “On a recent holiday, I was again struck by the overwhelming amount of non-recyclable materials around me,” Euramax CEO Harmen Kruijt explains. “These materials were everywhere, even in the beautiful spots where we were camping. I know we can do better! Although the aluminium industry has traditionally been energy intensive and polluting, the industry is taking huge steps forward in the transition to a cleaner future. At Euramax we’re doing the same, making significant investments to increase the recycled content in our products. This transition is motivated by our passion to realise eco-friendly excellence.”
‘The Green Metal’
Thanks to its lightness and strength, aluminium is one of the most widely used materials in the mobility and building sectors. While these qualities are well-known, far fewer people are aware that aluminium is also called ‘The Green Metal’”
This is because aluminium can be recycled over and over again without compromising on quality and without costly recycling processes. In fact, producing recycled aluminium is extremely cost effective as recycled aluminium requires only 5% of the energy needed to produce the virgin metal. Recycling aluminium is already being carried out on a high scale. In the case of the European vehicle and automotive sector, the recycling rate is more than 90%. This contrasts starkly with materials that aluminium competes with. Steel, for example, suffers from reduced quality when it’s recycled, and plastic (GRP) cannot be recycled effectively due to the physical property that gives it its strength: a thermosetting plastic cannot be remelted. The aluminium coils used by Euramax today might well have once been a drinks can in your fridge.
Aluminium has an 85% lower carbon footprint across the full lifecycle than plastic alternatives
While some people still associate aluminium with high energy use and carbon emissions, this is now a thing of the past. Aluminium is a relatively new material, which means that production previously relied mostly on virgin aluminium. Now that the metal has become such an important material, more and more scrap is available for recycling. Today, around 40% of global demand is met by recycled material. And thanks to its infinite recyclability, aluminium has an 85% lower carbon footprint across the full lifecycle than plastic alternatives.
Read more about the Euramax commitment to sustainability in the article ‘Join Us on the Road to Zero Carbon’: https://euramaxcladding.com/news/join-us-on-our-path-to-zero-carbon/
How is Euramax contributing to sustainable material use?
At Euramax for Mobility, we strongly believe in the power of aluminium to help create a more sustainable future. By offering coated aluminium of the highest quality, we offer our customers an alternative to less sustainable materials such as plastics. However, we also realise that there’s still more that we can do to make our own products cleaner. Together with our suppliers, we’re working intensively on developing more sustainable products. For example, we’re aiming to offer low-carbon aluminium to our customers in 2025, by offering the choice of more sustainable aluminium sources. This will enable us to achieve a 30% reduction in the carbon footprint of our products., We can, however, realise the greatest CO2 reduction by increasing the amount of recycled aluminium in our products. Thanks to intensive co-development with our suppliers, we can already offer alloys consisting of 80% recycled material.
Harmen Kruijt: “For Euramax, ‘being on your side’ means not only delivering what our customers need in the short term—quality service and products, but also working to help them realise their long-term goals when it comes to sustainability. This is why we’re increasing our use of recycled aluminium, and thereby dramatically reducing energy consumption.”
How are we making our processes more sustainable?
So far, the discussion has focused on Scope 3 emissions (related to the aluminium we source). This is because these emissions account for more than 90% of our carbon footprint, with Scope 1 and 2 emissions making up the remainder. However, in our quest to achieve zero carbon emissions, we cannot ignore this final 10%. We, therefore, aim to be a frontrunner in our industry in terms of sustainable production. By 2025, we will have shifted our entire power use to renewable energy sources, almost entirely eliminating our Scope 2 emissions.
Our Scope 1 emissions (resulting from the use of natural gas in our ovens) are more challenging to address. Nevertheless, we are committed to resolving this within the next ten years. To this end, we’re pursuing two parallel approaches: 1. We’re actively contributing to the ‘Delta Rhine Corridor’ project, which will provide green hydrogen at our plant, enabling us to reduce our Scope 1 emissions to zero. 2. If progress is insufficient to enable us to meet our goals, we will switch our production to electric infrared ovens powered by renewable energy.
Discover more about Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions in this English article: https://www.deloitte.com/uk/en/issues/climate/zero-in-on-scope-1-2-and-3-emissions.html
Show, don’t just tell
Of course, we realise that actual facts and figures speak louder than words. That’s why we’re actively developing an in-house tool to record our carbon footprint, which we also submit for external audit. This tool will give us exact data on our carbon footprint, which we can then share with our customers for the products that they buy.
Will you join us in our quest to create a more sustainable future for the mobility industry? See what we can do for your products at euramaxcladding.com