Lindéngruppen company Beckers have launched an exciting new “Towards renewable carbon” programme, which aims to transform their coatings value chain from fossil to renewable carbon.
“As an industrial coatings company, we have an impact and therefore a responsibility when it comes to climate change and so do our supply chain partners in the chemical industry,” says Nicklas Augustsson, Global Sustainability Director at Beckers. “The majority of our coil coating products are used in the construction industry, which is responsible for 40 per cent of global CO2e emissions. We need to play our part by first identifying where CO2e emissions come from in our value chain and then reducing our emissions.”
Beckers have actively worked on reducing greenhouse gas emissions at their manufacturing sites for many years. As part of their 2030 goals, they have also set targets to reduce CO2e emissions from transport, both inbound raw materials from suppliers and outbound finished products to customers.
“However, more than 80 per cent of the CO2e footprint of our coatings is embedded in our raw materials as they are often manufactured almost exclusively from fossil sources,” says Thomas Lüder, Global Director Procurement at Beckers. “Radical change in the industry is required in order to bring fossil carbon use to zero by 2050.”
Beckers’ ambition is to lead the introduction of renewable carbon raw materials into the industrial coatings industry. Together with their customers, they want to be the reference partner to key suppliers in the development and marketing of materials with renewable carbon content.
“We kicked off the programme by asking our suppliers to individually estimate the CO2e footprint of their products by the end of 2022 and we were encouraged by the positive feedback we received,” says Thomas. “Going forward, we will develop routes to gradually reduce the CO2e footprint of our raw materials to zero in close collaboration with our partners.”
Almost 100 participants from 27 suppliers were involved in a kick-off webinar. These suppliers were selected by Beckers due to their key role in the supply chain and included providers of solvents, Isocyanates, polyester, amino resins and pigments.
“We need our suppliers to work together with us to meet the environmental demands and challenges of our customers who, in their turn, are required to reduce the lifecycle emissions of their products by their customers and regulations,” says James Maxted, Global Product Sustainability Director at Beckers. “We are proactively working to reduce emissions at our own business activities but to decarbonise the industry we need to collaborate across the value chain.”
Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are becoming increasingly important and steel suppliers are setting emission reduction targets by 2030. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools are also becoming an essential way to communicate the reduced impact of Beckers’ products as they decarbonise.
“Customers are asking us what our footprint is, so reliable and accurate emission data is essential for their LCA tools to be able to quantify and compare different products,” says James. “There is a drive in the industry to decarbonise and step-by-step reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Collaboration with both customers and suppliers is key to succeed.”
