Ecodesign – building tomorrow's green production sites

Providing sustainable products, solutions, and services to our customers is part of our sustainability strategy. It supports our customers in improving the environmental impact of their production. Ecodesign offers excellent opportunities.

We emphasize a personalized approach for customers aiming for green production. Achieving emission transparency is crucial for optimizing future production sites. Therefore, we are currently working on how to make emissions digitally measurable and analyzable at various levels, from the machine right up to the planning and control systems of a production site. 

This will take time to happen, of course. Implementing the Ecodesign concept means more than just minimizing the carbon footprint; it's about reimagining how we design, create, and operate machinery for a sustainable future. 

At Körber, we started working on this topic when we founded the Ecodesign think tank back in 2021 to develop Ecodesign guidelines and coordinate the Ecodesign community. In April 2023, we additionally established the Ecodesign Center of Excellence (CoE), aimed at collaborating with design stakeholders to craft tailored standards, capitalizing on synergies throughout all Körber Business Areas.

This is a constant work in progress. So far, the most important principles are:

We are also conducting pilots for individualized Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) based on ISO standards and have established the first group wide LCA standard that guides setting up and executing an LCA for all Körber machinery. 

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service throughout its entire life cycle. It considers raw material extraction, production, use, and disposal factors. LCAs help identify areas for improvement in sustainability and inform decision-making processes.

Net-zero pledge and GHG scopes

A genuinely sustainable production site must drastically reduce its emissions in three distinct scopes as defined by the GHG protocol. 

Essentially, Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions that are owned or controlled by a company. Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy, and Scope 3 refers to all indirect emissions from the value chain, covering activities such as transportation, production, and disposal of purchased goods and services. 

This requires maximum transparency about the exact emissions figures along the value chain including suppliers as well as customers.

To combat climate change effectively – the most pressing sustainability issue of our time – Körber has embraced a net-zero commitment, aligning with the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) guidelines and with a primary focus on emissions reduction. Just recently, the SBTi approved our net-zero targets.

Being a technology group, we at Körber are heavily involved in machine building. Therefore, we focus on Scopes 3.1 and 3.11 due to significant hotspots in purchased goods and services, and use of sold products. 

What Ecodesign can do for our customers' energy efficiency

Ecodesign can play a significant role in making products more energy efficient – and it does so already. Solutions to gather substantial energy savings in machinery and production facilities can be achieved by:

• implementing energy recovery systems based on a holistic system analysis
• minimizing energy losses within technical solutions
• embracing modularization for seamless upgrades

Erich Hoch, COO/CTO at Körber Group, points out the three principal ways to improve the energy efficiency of our customers' production facilities. 

Reducing pollutants during production is as essential as during the product's lifespan. However, Ecodesign is an elastic and evolving concept. It should be seen as a design approach rather than a label. And one thing's for sure: Without Ecodesign, we will never be able to contribute to achieving the critical 1.5-degree global target. 

Join us in the transition to a more sustainable, energy-efficient future.