Speira Recycling Services
Sustainability Report
Embracing the concept of sustainability for a business first of all means showing responsibility.
For our owners, we have a responsibility to deliver value. For our employees, we aim to offer reliable employment, fair working conditions, and a safe work environment. For our customers, we are responsible for the quality of our products and services – classically, this is meeting the customers’ specifications related to alloy type, quantity, time of delivery etc. Beyond that we recognize our responsibility to prevent wasting natural resources and energy as well as to carefully manage our emissions and releases into the environment. These are mere starting points for a long journey. But we see our entire industry transform from cost-orientation to sustainability-orientation – a transformation which is demanded from both society and customers. At Speira's Recycling Services, we capture the inherent economic value of recycled Aluminium by offering environmentally responsible processing solutions.
We understand today’s imperative for sustainable resources and are proud to supply our customers with high-quality recycled Aluminium and Magnesium. In comparison to primary Aluminium the production of our alloys requires much less energy and results in far lower CO₂ emissions. This process-based advantage is complemented by continual improvement of our operations, efficient and intelligent sourcing, development alongside the entire recycling value chain, and the employment of digital solutions. This all will help us to futher reduce our ecological footprint and to successfully work towards sustainability.
Ralf Köring Managing Director & Head of Speira’s Recycling Services
Our Profile
Speira's Recycling Services is the European and global market leader in third-party Aluminium recycling and specification alloy production. We convert Aluminium and Magnesium scrap and by-products into reusable metal for a growing number of applications across various industries.
Our customers can choose from an extensive range of cast and wrought alloys made from Aluminium and Magnesium scrap and metal, delivered to their door in the form of molten metal, Recycled Secondary Ingots (RSI), small ingots, or cones. Additionally, we also produce various magnesium alloys based on Magnesium scrap and metal, delivered as solid ingot form. With three facilities in the heart of Europe, Speira's Recycling Services is ideally positioned to respond to the needs of an increasingly recycling-conscious world.
Advanced technologies enable us to process a large variety of scrap types and skimmings. Therefore, our products are widely based on low CO₂ footprints. This report summarises the efforts towards sustainability at Speira's Recycling Services with our German sites Grevenbroich, Deizisau, and Töging. Until April 2023, the report also covers the two sites Eidsvåg and Raudsand which now belong to Speira's Business Unit Norway, and the divested sites in Swansea, UK, and R.V.A. in Les Islettes in France.
Our Values
Speira's Recycling Services employees are spread across three production sites, yet they are all united by the passion for excellence and are committed to integrity and accountability. At each site, our teams foster an environment of trust and empowerment, where good ideas are encouraged and setbacks are viewed as learning opportunities. Always tuned in to the bigger picture, we are motivated by a strong sense of responsibility towards our colleagues, customers, suppliers, other business partners, and our communities.
Our values define what we stand for. In addition, our policies provide a framework and directions and set clear expectations on an ethical and responsible approach to business not only for all our managers and employees, but also for our suppliers. They describe how our business partners and all our stakeholders may expect us to operate. Among these Recycling Services' policies are:
Respect for Human Rights, including Women's Rights, and Labour Rights are foundations of our corporate culture. We have a clear commitment to legal compliance and strictly oppose any form of discrimination and harassment, child labour or forced labour or any other un-ethical behaviour.
By joining the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative in November 2019 we have made a clear commitment towards sustainability: In June 2021 we achieved our fist certification against ASI Performance Standard V2 (PS), covering our production site at Deizisau and including all centrally administered processes and policies in our HQ in Grevenbroich. This was followed by an expansion of the PS certification scope to include our Grevenbroich production plant, with the audit concluded in June 2022. At the same time the first certification audit against the ASI Chain of Custody Standard V1 (CoC) was completed. By January 2023, all our German production sites as well as the Grevenbroich HQ held certification against ASI Performance Standard V2 (PS).
With Aluminium recycling at the core of our business, Aluminium stewardship is an inherent part of our corporate “fabric”. Thus, becoming a member of ASI was a natural step for us to make. We are happy to be part of the ASI community and to benefit from as much as contribute to the sharing and learning offered by their members.
The compilation of our initial Sutainability Report in the course of our first ASI audits foreshadowed our sustainability ambition. This “journey” has no end point. But it does need timed milestones that are specific, measurable and realistic, so that we can keep checking ourselves along the way and possibly refocus our efforts. We decided to sort our targets according to the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDG) that the United Nations adopted in 2015 as part of its 2030 Agenda. In particular, we refer to seven of the 17 SDG in which we can make a specific contribution with our business activities.
Our Targets
Our sustainability journey has no end point. But it does need timed milestones that are specific, measurable and realistic, so that we can keep checking ourselves along the way and possibly refocus our efforts. We decided to sort our targets according to the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDG) that the United Nations adopted in 2015 as part of its 2030 Agenda. In particular, we refer to seven of the 17 SDG in which we can make a specific contribution with our business activities:
Working – but safely! This applies to us every day and not just as a long-term goal. Zero accidents is the optimum. At the very least, however, we do not want to exceed the threshold of 1.25 recordable accidents (IIR/REC) and 0.4 accidents with lost days (DAW) per 200,000 working hours.
Lifelong learning is an important part of our working world. As Speira's Recycling Services, we continuously qualify our employees, regardless of their previous education, and thus support their professional and personal development.
Diversity in our industry is traditionally first and foremost a gender issue. We want to increase the share of women in our apprenticeships, in the entire workforce and in management.
In our direct procurement and in our association work in Germany and the EU, we advocate for the highest possible share of renewable energy. At the moment, this only refers to green electricity, but in the future, it will also include other energy sources such as green hydrogen instead of natural gas.
With these goals mentioned, we are securing well-paid jobs. Our industry is not only an important link in a strong value chain, but also a factor for prosperity in our home regions.
Fossil energy consumption and our carbon footprint are two sides of the same coin. The share of non-renewable energy that we need to produce one tonne of metal is to be reduced by 30 percent by 2030 compared to 2020. In concrete terms: Then only 0.93 megawatt hours or less of fossil energy should be used in each tonne of aluminium or magnesium.
This will also reduce the specific greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of metal produced by 30 percent by 2030 compared to 2020. This means that the carbon footprint of a tonne of our recycled metal, which is based on fossil energy sources, is to shrink from 253 to 177 kilograms of CO2 or less.
Aluminiumstraße 3 41515 Grevenbroich Germany
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