by Krah Group Management

Sustainability is a very important and much discussed topic these days. No one can avoid at least thinking about how to live more sustainable, environmentally conscious and healthy and thus improve their own carbon footprint anymore.

As a medium-sized company, we too have not only been thinking about it for years how to improve economic, social and ecological aspects, but also taking action accounting to it.  Because when it comes to the responsible use of our environment and its limited resources, we do not just want to meet the standards, we want to go beyond those. In order to achieve a good climate balance as a company, a strict view of the value chain is necessary.  To this end, we pay very meticulous attention to waste separation and, above all, waste avoidance - in the company itself as well as in the production of our raw materials. Switching from fossil fuels to sustainable ones is an essential point that can lead to a better carbon footprint of a company. We will be installing solar plants on our company’s roof to ensure our own power supply and to be able to supply other companies in the area with it.

We will completely convert our company cars to those using electric mobility in the coming years. To this end, we have already exchanged the first cars and installed two electric charging stations for them outside the company. Our newly built office extension was constructed in a climate-neutral way and clad with wood from local forests to better integrate with nature. The roof will be greened in the near future so that, on the one hand, a species-rich ecosystem can develop, and, on the other hand, the interior spaces are automatically better insulated. Our development team is currently working on finding various ways to significantly reduce the overall energy requirement in both the company and pipe production. Because we do not just want to improve our carbon footprint in our own company, we also want to ensure that our products are more environmentally friendly and climate neutral with the machines we manufacture. To this end, recycled plastic can also be used for pipe production with our machines. In addition, excess material, such as test pipes or deformed parts, can be crushed with a mill developed by us in order to reuse it for pipe production. This means that our PE pipes not only have a service life of over 100 years but can also be recycled afterwards and used for the production of new pipes. In recent years, the transformation of analogue products and services in our company has become more and more digitalised and visualised in order to simplify processes and, above all, to remain competitive in the market.

During the Covid crisis, we changed to an AI-supported method of setting up and commissioning as well as maintaining our machines abroad. Previously, our employees travelled to the customers for assembly, commissioning, maintenance and training. These distances are now saved by setting up the machine from here with the help of artificial intelligence, cameras and video calls. This saves us an extremely large amount of air travel and thus emissions, which benefits our carbon footprint. To save further emissions and to support our region, we source most of our raw materials from the surrounding area.

In all our developments, the focus is always on people - everyone with their individual ideas, requirements and goals is taken seriously by us. Ultimately, each and every one of us, with our attitude, decides whether we succeed in protecting the environment and the climate sustainably and in shaping our future positively together. We believe that the typical approach of hiring employees solely on the basis of their qualifications and experience is long outdated, so we take a rather comprehensive approach to the selection of our employees. We make sure that socially disadvantaged people also get a chance and preferably pay attention to their motivation and personality rather than just their qualifications. To facilitate our business goals, we therefore focus on diversity, prefer to hire people from the region and promote everyone in the way that is right for them - always following the motto “we leave no one behind“. We do a lot to ensure that our employees feel comfortable and enjoy working here. Among other things, we offer free drinks, regularly organise company events to strengthen team spirit, and offer while also supporting further training.

The shift from pure profit-making intentions of companies will focus more and more on social and sustainable aspects, profit is no longer in the spotlight. As a medium-sized, regional company, we support this and will prepare an annual ESG report for this purpose starting from 31.12.2022, which we will enclose with the annual financial statements of the Krah company.

Alexander Krah

Krah Group