Integrated Environmental Protection

Conserving resources and protecting the environment is not only an increasing necessity, it is also standard practice at the Benteler Group. The Company intends to make a positive contribution toward a sustainable future by improving its environmental performance in every segment and raising awareness among employees, suppliers and customers. Measures for environmentally appropriate organization cover the Group's entire product range and all production procedures -and here Benteler includes a product's entire life cycle, from the use of raw materials, to product development, production, and product use, all the way to disposal and recycling. In other words, integrated environmental protection stands on an equal footing as a corporate goal in all the Benteler Group's activities, on a par with maximum quality and maximum customer satisfaction, combined with maximum levels of safety for employees. These principles are laid down in the corporate guidelines. The Benteler Group has installed an environmental management system that is regularly certified to DIN EN ISO 14001. All plants met the requirements of that standard during the year, and in many cases exceeded them.

Acting with environmental awareness

In addition, environmental protection is a part of everyday routine - and depends directly on employee involvement. Benteler maintains an extensive training program at every location, to raise awareness of how production processes interact with the environment. Many individual measures demonstrate this high level of commitment - such as setting up site maps to help visualize noise emissions, replacing solvents with innovative anti-corrosion treatments, introducing a new process control technology at the Lingen steel works, and developing shutdown checklists for unneeded auxiliary systems.

The REACH European Chemicals Regulation

The REACH Regulation, originally adopted to improve protection for health and the environment by establishing complete information about the characteristics of materials, includes all substances and byproducts generated in the European Union, including the slag that develops in smelting steel. For that reason, with the participation of the entire industry throughout the EU, the Benteler Stahl/Rohr division developed extensive documentation of chemical and physical properties, and submitted it on time to the new central authority in Helsinki, Finland, on November 30, 2010. Under the principle of "no data - no market," it would have been impossible to market products without a registration, meaning in effect a production ban for the steel mill.

The standardized SAP materials database on traceability of employed substances under the terms of the REACH Regulation has been implemented at Benteler Automotive and introduced with success in all of the division's regions. Methods have also been optimized for preventive emergency organization, emergency supplies and hazard prevention for both employees and the environment. A further established process regulates safe ordering procedures worldwide, and the substitution testing of hazardous materials to control and reduce those materials.

Energy Management Systems

The heart of the energy management system introduced at the Benteler Stahl/Rohr division in 2010 is an extensive collection of data from all points that consume energy, making it possible to identify weaknesses. The system is aligned with the new DIN EN 16001 standard, and has been integrated into the existing management system. Benteler Automotive launched the Integrated Management System project to achieve the Company's ecological and economic objectives, and to improve on them. The energy aspects of DIN EN 16001 and the environmental aspects of ISO standard 14001 are described in a single, unified process.

Waste Documentation Procedure

The new waste documentation procedure has been fully computerized. It makes it significantly easier for generators of waste, waste disposal services, and the authorities to communicate with each other. Formerly extensive paper documentation had to be prepared and exchanged among parties for each individual batch, but now the process is handled entirely through an e-mail system in which the government's Central Coordination Office serves as the information hub. The project, carried out under the leadership of the Benteler Stahl/Rohr division for all Benteler locations in Germany, reached a successful completion in 2010. To optimize waste management, Benteler Automotive developed a new key performance indicator. It assigns recyclable waste a positive rating and landfill waste a negative one, thus helping to limit landfill waste.