"Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and requires the industry to rethink in many areas as well," said executive board member Thierry Wolter during a press conference.
By 2025, Ceratizit aims at offsetting all emissions along the entire supply chain and reduce actual emissions by 35% compared to 2020. The second stage, 2030, would see a reduction of 60% compared to 2020. By 2040, the company wants to achieve net zero.
"Reducing CO2 emissions along the entire value chain by at least 75% by 2040 is without question a challenge. However, with a view to future generations, we see no alternative to this path," added Wolter.
Plans are for the company to increase its use of secondary raw materials to over 95%. According to Ceratizit, when compared to primary raw materials from ore, secondary materials processing requires 70% less energy and reduces CO2 emissions by 40%. This can also help safeguard the supply chain for raw materials.
Ceratizit also wants to switch the power supply of all sites to green electricity from wind, solar and water power in the next few years.
Finally, it aims to replace ‘grey’ hydrogen, obtained from natural gas by steam reforming, with ‘blue’ hydrogen, produced from water by electrolysis with green electricity, as a production medium in the hard metal industry. To do this, Ceratizit will work with existing suppliers and also build its own electrolysis plants.