Environmental and sustainability guidelines

We use the best-available and economically justifiable technical systems to operate our plants with the aim of achieving an optimum level of safety that ensures the well-being of our employees while protecting the environment. This prudent approach to handling our plant systems is further supported by regular maintenance and inspection. We also make every effort to not just meet but to exceed all applicable legal and regulatory standards.

Accounting for sustainability and responsibility as part of our day-to-day business is an integral part of corporate life at SHS and a long-standing core aspect of our general company policy. In adopting their comprehensive approach to sustainability, SHS Group companies are taking responsibility for current and future generations of employees and stakeholders, while pursuing the overall aim of using sustainable techniques to manufacture high-quality steel products.
The SHS Group has declared its commitment to the Paris Agreement and intends to play its part in achieving carbon-neutral steel production. Taking responsibility for people and the environment will always be prioritised in the process of our transformation into a ‘green steel’ producer – both now and in the future. Based on what we have achieved to date and seeking to ensure a liveable future for all, we continuously identify new opportunities for improvement and strengthen our ambitious targets.
In recent years, our companies have made excellent progress in reducing our carbon footprint, especially when compared with competitors. This transparent approach to sustainability together with our clearly defined transformation strategy means we can share our ambitions with our customers, employees, suppliers and all of our other stakeholders.

The principle of minimising change to habitats and biotopes while ensuring and actively promoting the responsible handling of ecosystems is observed across all sites operated by SHS, including all of its production facilities. Compensatory measures and the targeted rewilding of native species in protected areas – such as the company’s own landfills and properties – offer an opportunity to enrich our production facilities and their immediate environment.

The environmental impact arising from Group activities must be kept to a minimum. We achieve this by economising our use of energy and resources, and by minimising our emissions, waste (applying the circular economy model) and water consumption. Our ecological impacts are monitored and analysed to identify reduction options. We also prioritise improvements to our programmes for minimising air pollutants, noise, waste water and waste in general, and to save resources such as energy and water.

Environmental measures are integrated into our actual production process rather than being applied later as downstream measures. Continuous improvements to our protective measures require considerable investment in our plant technology (examples include noise abatement and filtration as well as waste heat recovery systems).

All of our employees are responsible for ensuring that we work towards achieving our environmental protection targets. We take a systematic approach to ensuring responsible conduct and the protection of resources. These subjects feature regularly in our internal training curriculum.

SHS pursues openness in its external and internal communications, using appropriate formats to keep employees, customers, local communities, regulators and the general public informed about its environmental protection activities, while seeking to keep such interactions transparent, objective and comprehensive. Every three years, SHS documents its aims and activities in the form of a Sustainability Report for the group. KPIs and other data can be found in the fact sheets for Dillinger and Saarstahl, which are updated on an annual basis.

Production and products that avoid pollution and damage to the environment are a basic precondition for the Group’s long-term viability as a business. With our proactive forward planning strategy and annual environmental audits of our standards and certification, we are able to evaluate our own level of performance. Every year, Dillinger and Saarstahl complete certification according to DIN ISO 14001 and participate in a number of sustainability indices, including EcoVadis and the Carbon Disclosure Project.