Improvements and Initiatives at Sapa Group

Sapa locations worldwide carry out many and varied environmental improvements.

The initiatives range from the installation of state-of-the-art melting furnaces, elimination of hazardous substances from surface treatment chemicals, prevention of spills, and energy saving activities, to the implementation of ISO14001.

Examples of our initiatives and improvements over the last years:

• Sapa Heat Transfer Shanghai has installed a solar water heating system and changed most of its furnaces from diesel to natural gas with considerable savings in energy use and emissions, as well as financially.
• Sapa Pole Products focuses on reducing CO2 emission throughout the whole production process. Energy savings have been implemented at different stages, green energy is purchased, and with the Sapa Pole Products' patented reinforcement profile the weight of the lighting columns have been reduced up to 20%. Sapa Pole Products also cooperates with the Dutch Climate Neutral Group to compensate the remaining CO2 emission through a Compost project in Egypt.
• Sapa Heat Transfer Finspång, Sweden, has recently signed an 'Energy Performance Contract' with an energy consultancy company. Over a period of six years, the consultants will perform a number of energy-reducing measures relating to the location's heating and ventilation systems for a share of the savings achieved. Estimated savings after implementation are in the range of 2,800 MWh/year.
• Sapa Heat Transfer has designed its product development model so as to take account of the product's environmental impacts throughout its life cycle. Efforts are now taking place to increase the percentage of recycled aluminium in production.
• Sapa Heat Transfer Finspång, Sweden, is working on minimizing transport distances and switching to more environmentally friendly transportations vehicles. For instance, truck distribution from a supplier in Norway is now made by train. Another example is the investment for loading containers, which enables products to be transported by rail instead of trucks.
• Sapa's locations in Sweden and Poland have been reducing caustic soda consumption significantly due to process improvements, and, as a result, the resultant waste (spent caustic, sludge) was also decreased.
• Sapa Profiles Puget in France installed a state-of-the-art waste water treatment facility, thereby greatly reducing chemical consumption and eliminating the need to use chrome.