A Sustainable Strategy

When a company — an advertiser —offers to pay my way overseas to join 40 or so other industry media representatives from around the world for a special press event and tour, I go for two main reasons. First, it’s free. Second, given that it’s free the company must have something fairly significant to share. Spoiler, it did.

Dubbed “CERATIZIT Open Days 2024,” the trip included tours of the CERATIZIT Group’s factories in Reutte, Austria, the logistics and technical center in Kempten, Germany, and the innovation center in Balzheim, Germany. Though the event allowed the company to share news of several technological advancements, such as its additive manufacturing success with carbide, CERATIZIT’s larger, overarching message — its mission — was loud and clear: to increase material recycling and energy optimization to ensure a sustainable future for the hard metal and cutting tool industry.

The first step toward that end is to reach product carbon neutrality by 2025. That means CERATIZIT intends to reduce by 35% the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions of all greenhouse gases it uses to produce a product. By 2030, the goal is to reduce CO2e by 60%. And, by 2040, CERATIZIT plans to achieve net zero status, or a 90% reduction in CO2e.

As the company explained during the press tour, CERATIZIT has and is switching to green energy — its Reutte facilities will run on 50% green hydrogen beginning in 2025. Meanwhile, the company has been running production with 99% electricity from renewable sources since 2022. That move alone, according to CERATIZIT, helped the company reduce its corporate carbon footprint by more than 20%.