"Sustainability will not happen on its own," says Urs Neuhauser.

Griesser places great importance on environmental protection. In recent years, many improvements have been made, says Urs Neuhauser, CEO of Griesser. In particular, the new production site in Nenzing, Austria, represents a breakthrough on the path to climate neutrality.

Mr. Neuhauser, Switzerland’s government wants the country to be climate-neutral by 2050, and the European Union has committed all its member states to the same objective. A lot of strict legislation has been enacted in various countries to these ends. Is this putting pressure on Griesser to modify its product range and its production processes?

The legal requirements in Switzerland and the EU are actually quite lax: they’re not what motivates us. In fact, we’re some three to five years ahead of them. Manufacturing ecofriendly products in a way that is as gentle as possible on the climate and is above all socially sustainable is a core principle of our family firm, and is deeply rooted in our corporate DNA.

We want to be successful in business terms, of course. But doing good for society is especially close to our hearts. That’s why we have anchored our Sustainability Vision in our strategic corporate objectives; and it’s why we’ve been collaborating closely with the myclimate environmental foundation for almost two decades now, since 2006. Our joint efforts here include ensuring that our blinds are repaired wherever possible, and are also duly and professionally recycled at the end of their service lives.

On top of this, we are working on various projects and actions to steadily further enhance our environmental impact credentials. To take just one example here, we have transformed the systems technology in the more than 30-year-old administration building at our corporate headquarters in Aadorf in Switzerland. As a result, we no longer use air conditioning to cool the building in summer: we do so instead using water from the stream that flows through the site, in what at the time was a truly pioneering achievement.

Would you like to see stricter legislation adopted on the climate protection front?

Sustainability won’t just happen, and the lawmakers do need to get the construction sector to shoulder more of these responsibilities. That’s why I am myself involved in CEO4Climate, which is a network of climate-minded members of the Swiss business community that has been set up by Switzerland’s swisscleantech association for sustainable business practices. We’ve already submitted motions to the Swiss National Council to show that the business world would be in favor of more rigorous climate protection laws; we’re active within various European organizations; and we collaborate with like-minded parties from all over the continent.

That sounds great. But changes to the law often take a lot of time. You can certainly make things move faster within your own organization. So what kind of climate strategy have you adopted at Griesser?

It’s been five years now since we resolved to put an even firmer focus on ecological sustainability in our business and operations. Our first decision here was to switch our 400-strong vehicle fleet to electric vehicle technology. And we’re well on the way to doing so. Parallel to this, we’ve become the first solar shading manufacturer to offer awning fabrics that are made from recycled PET plastic – which is one of the actions that earned us the 2022 Family Business Award, which the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper and the AMAG automotive group bestow on what they regard as exemplary family businesses.

Our most ambitious goal ahead is to make our Griesser production sites entirely climate-neutral. This is a huge challenge, because the manufacture of our products requires substantial amounts of process energy: our coating processes, for instance, involve temperatures of over 200°C. So we still have a long way to go here. But with our new Nenzing site in Vorarlberg in Austria we’ve marked a milestone on this journey, too.

What makes the new Nenzing production facility so special?

It confirms the feasibility of our vision of climate-neutral production. The solar cells that have been installed on the building’s roof and facades produce enough energy – in combination with heat pumps and a sophisticated use of waste water resources – to meet the factory’s entire energy needs in the summer months, making us both climate-neutral and energy-self-sufficient. Which is a phenomenal achievement in engineering terms.

The winter months are admittedly still a challenge. The building’s solar cell system can still meet a large part of our energy needs. But with the shorter daylight hours, we also have to draw on external energy at this time of the year. This too, though, is in the form of green energy generated from natural gas derived from biomass sources.

Alongside the large volumes of energy that are required in your production processes, it’s the key raw material of aluminum that offers you the greatest lever for further improving Griesser’s environmental footprint.

The global average carbon dioxide emissions generated for every kilo of aluminum produced amounts to 16.7 kilos. At Griesser we’ve reduced this to 3.3 kilos. Which represents a five-fold reduction in the corresponding carbon footprint.

Aluminum is well known for requiring a lot of electricity to produce. And this is where we’ve focused our efforts. The aluminum we consume is manufactured in Scandinavia using green electricity that’s generated from hydro sources. And its eco-credentials are further enhanced by incorporating a high proportion of recycled material: the production of our green aluminum re-uses the waste material generated by the process along with melted aluminum from recyclable materials collections.

Unfortunately, there is still little demand from industry for such green aluminum, and it’s only currently available in Europe from two manufacturers. That’s a pity, because in environmental terms, aluminum which has been produced in a responsible and eco-minded way is an excellent construction choice for a building’s outer skin, as it can withstand wind and weather for at least 50 years.

Green aluminum is still quite expensive, too. But this is an additional procurement cost that we don’t pass on to the customer. Instead, we offset it through our own efficiency enhancements, such as using new machines and procedures to reduce production waste and minimizing material thickness while fully maintaining product quality.

Architects say that, for the environment’s sake, manufacturers should take back their products and recycle them or, even better, repair them.

All our Griesser products can be repaired. And their motors and their plastic components can be easily replaced. We’ve also been offering for some 20 years now to dispose of our products at the end of their service life in a climate-neutral way, although this is still currently done using a carbon offset approach. In doing so, we collect and separate all the recyclable materials ourselves; and we conduct our aluminum recycling using the ‘cradle-to-cradle’ principle, working with partner companies to feed all such materials back into the production cycle.

We’re currently revising our repair concept, too, to improve it even further. Given the high durability of our products, it would, for instance, be conceivable to refurbish parts of them and then reinstall these as reconditioned elements.

You mentioned at the beginning that social sustainability is particularly close to your heart. Sadly, assertions of this kind are often little more than marketing ploys. So how do you practice respectful and appreciative interactions with your people? And how does Griesser fare on the issues of inclusion and equal opportunities?

We attach a lot of importance to maintaining good equal-footing communications. In my CEO capacity I make myself regularly available for discussions, and I am always ready to listen to any problems or concerns. We also have our Griesser Foundation to support any member of our workforce who is going through the tougher side of life’s ups and downs. And we’re an educational institution, too: we have some 40 apprentices in Switzerland, and we offer our people a sizeable program of in-house training and further development opportunities through our Griesser Academy.

Inclusion and equal opportunities are very important to us, too. Our business and activities extend throughout Western Europe, and we have people from 30 nations working together at our Aadorf headquarters alone. Regrettably, being a technical industrial company, we can’t presently boast a high proportion of female personnel. But I do see a very encouraging trend here among our apprentices and our younger employees: more and more young women are showing an interest in training with us, and we’re recruiting growing numbers of female salespeople and installation technicians. And even in our production units we’re seeing a noticeable rise in the proportion of our female employees.

Interview conducted by World-Architects with Griesser CEO Urs Neuhauser.