Customers expect sustainable solutions
A sustainable approach to business will contribute to ensuring long-term value creation, says Christina Båge Friborg, Head of Sustainable Business at Sandvik.
How does sustainability drive business at Sandvik?
“First of all, our customers and our customers’ customers demand it. Being sustainable is not an option for us, it is something our customers expect us to incorporate both in our products and in our own operations.”
How does this help Sandvik?
“A sustainable approach to business will contribute to ensuring long-term value creation for our customers, our investors and our employees alike. Our biggest impact, from a sustainability perspective, lies with our customers. It is therefore mainly through our products and services that we can make a difference. For us, it is a competitive advantage to be able to sell, for example, more energy- or fuel-efficient products that have a lower impact on the environment than our competitors’ products."
“We spend a lot of resources on R&D to develop products that enable our customers to grow economically while limiting environmental impact, such as developing more energy-efficient solutions, safer products or buying back used cemented carbide products from our customers, which are then recycled.”
What are the biggest challenges today for Sandvik related to sustainability?
"Our societies and marketplaces are going through large changes due to digitization and globalization. There is a strong sustainability perspective related to energy use when more and more processes become automated. Sustainability issues are very important; climate change and access to clean water, for example, are becoming major challenges.
"At the same time, this represents a business opportunity for us as we deliver equipment to desalination plants, for example. Also, we recently launched battery-driven underground mining equipment that reduces CO2 emissions and diesel particulates in the air to almost zero when in use."