Sustainability Shapes Our Strategy

We have identified six key Areas of Action for our sustainability strategy, which serve as the basis for our commitment. These clearly defined areas structure and focus our actions in order to anchor sustainability in all company processes in a targeted and effective manner. With this systematic approach, we manage specific actions and set priorities in order to combine ecological, social, and economic objectives in the long term.

Innovation is the key to successful products. We were active in 20 partnerships in 2024 with external organisation, such as universities and Start-ups, which underscores the importance of research and development for the Koehler Group. On top of that, we have already met our target of having 15% of our revenue come from product innovations.

One extraordinary example of our capacity for innovation is the development of flexible packaging paper with barrier properties that are optimized for tea packaging. In fact, it shows how we are creating forward-looking solutions in response to the growing demand for environmentally friendly packaging materials that maintain a high level of product quality while meeting strict environmental requirements.

Moreover, the quality of our products is reflected in the extremely low rate of complaints we receive, currently stands at less than 0.3% – a target we had originally set for 2030. This outstanding rate is proof of the precision and care we put into our manufacturing processes and underscores our quality promise to our customers.

Renewable Raw Materials and Responsible Sources

As a company that depends on raw materials, we attach enormous importance to making sure that these materials come from responsible suppliers. This commitment can be seen in concrete figures: 100% of the virgin fibers we use originate from sustainable forestry and controlled sources. The most important certification systems for sustainable forestry are the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) and the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). Our planned target of having 80% of the fibers we use FSC®/PEFC-certified by 2024 has been clearly exceeded, as we have already achieved a figure of 86%.

These numbers illustrate our commitment to responsible raw material procurement practices. By using certified fibers, we are making an important contribution to protecting our forests and promoting sustainable forestry.

Resource Efficiency

When it comes to resource efficiency, we have made significant progress in the area of water use in particular. With four liters of wastewater per kilogram of paper, our Kehl mill is one of the most water-efficient paper production operations in all of Europe. In addition, we have expanded our wastewater treatment plant with state-of-the-art technologies, ensuring that all production water can be handled there. This not only lessens our impact on local bodies of water and the load on our municipal treatment plant, but also helps further reduce our production operations’ environmental footprint. On top of this, we have added a shoe press to paper machine 4 at our Oberkirch mill. This unit presses up to 5% more water out of the paper web than the previous equipment we were using, which ends up saving around 15% steam in the downstream drying stage. This in turn speeds up the overall process while simultaneously making it more energy-efficient, since the combined heat and power plant does not need to produce as much steam.

A Visionary Approach to Climate Action

In order to reduce our fossil greenhouse gas emissions, we are replacing fossil fuels with renewable raw materials in our combined heat and power plants. The power plant at our Greiz mill has been firing wood dust instead of lignite since the beginning of 2024, and the power plant at our Oberkirch mill has been firing biomass instead of black coal since the end of 2024. To this end, we have built three collection points for biomass at our Oberkirch mill and erected four silos in order to store that biomass. Additionally, the combustion chamber there has been converted to accomodate the new type of fuel. Meanwhile, with regard to delivery logistics for the aforementioned biomass, we have optimized the corresponding routes in such a way that trucks will only need to be on our plant premises briefly, minimizing the negative impact that they could have on the neighborhood. Finally, Zollikofer has acquired French wood trade company REKO Energie Bois in order to ensure a reliable supply of biomass for our combined heat and power plants in the long term.

These conversion measures will cut direct fossil carbon dioxide emissions by 24,000 metric tons a year at our Greiz mill and by around 150,000 metric tons a year at our Oberkirch mill. Put more succinctly, this is expected to reduce the Koehler Group’s carbon dioxide emissions by more than half. This should come as no surprise, as the Koehler Promise made over ten years ago had already established energy from renewable sources as a central pillar of our climate protection strategy, and the corresponding commitment can be seen in the steady progress we are making in that area.

With their work, our employees are the ones driving the Koehler Group’s positive evolution forward. We want to provide them with an environment that empowers them to take advantage of development opportunities – all the way from apprenticeship to retirement. And with a training rate of 4.8%, we have already exceeded our goal of 4% for 2030. More specifically, we have more than 100 apprentices and dual-study program students across all training years at our Oberkirch, Kehl, Willstätt, Weisenbach, and Greiz locations.

We are also making good progress in professional development: Our employees invested an average of 24.5 hours into training in 2024, which was significantly more than the 20 hours we had expected for the year. This is due in part to a broad range of offerings that include e-learning modules and in-person training courses covering all aspects of professional and personal development. Moreover, we have a program for getting started in leadership roles for employees who want to take on managerial responsibilities.

We are especially proud of our new technical training center at the Koehler Group Campus in Willstätt. With an area of over 3,000 square meters, this center offers five times as much space as our previous training workshop and is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment. We invested around 1.5 million euros in building the new center, where 42 young individuals will be acquiring the basic skills required for careers in electronics, industrial mechanics, and mechatronics.

As is well known, skilled workers with training in paper industry trades are becoming increasingly difficult to find. That is why we have created a career change program. This program gives people with experience in other professional fields the opportunity to train for a job in our paper production operations. In cooperation with the training center for paper trades in Gernsbach, we have come up with a module-based approach that combines basic theory with plenty of hands-on learning. This compact advanced training offering is designed to enable participants to acquire the most important skills required in order to work safely and productively on paper machines.

Growing the Company’s Value

We started preparing for the mandatory sustainability reporting requirements of the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) as early as 2023. The EU Taxonomy Regulation supplements the CSRD and defines the business activities that are considered to be environmentally sustainable by the EU institutions.

The EcoVadis rating demonstrates that our consistent commitment to sustainability also pays off economically. The international rating agency comprehensively evaluates companies in the environment, social, ethical, and supply chain categories. The Koehler Group goes through this comprehensive analysis every year, as it helps us make our sustainability performance transparent and improve on it continuously. EcoVadis’s assessment serves as an important external benchmark that enables us to measure our progress in regard to our sustainability strategy and methodically identify areas where there is potential for optimization. With 90 out of 100 possible points, we have been awarded platinum status and have accordingly far outdone our original target of having a score of 80 by 2030. This is significant, as this platinum status is the highest distinction that can awarded in the EcoVadis assessment system. “This puts us among the top 1% of companies with the best score across the world in terms of sustainability and responsible business practices,” says Sustainability Manager Jens Kriete with pride. This outstanding score corroborates our pioneering role in the area of sustainability and is a strong signal for our customers, partners, and investments.

Even with all these success stories, there are still challenges ahead when it comes to implementing our sustainability targets: Sustainability is more than just a strategy – it is dependent on the belief and dedication of every single person who works in our company, whether that be at one of our paper machines or in top management. We are endeavoring to make our entire workforce an integral part of this process and want to motivate every single one of our more than 2,500 employees to see sustainability not as an additional task, but rather as an integral part of their day-to-day work.

In order for us to be able to tackle the topic of sustainability in a holistic manner, all areas of the company need to work together more closely than ever before. The challenge in this regard sometimes lies in things that look deceptively trivial: While some of our departments calculate KPIs based on metric tons of paper, others use square meters as their unit. These different approaches are simply the result of heterogeneous data collection practices within the Koehler Group. Needless to say, these and many other processes need to be standardized and optimized through digitalization.

In addition, we are constantly faced with the tension between ecological investments and economic feasibility, for example, when purchasing pulp. It is, of course, important for us to use top-grade fibers from certified forestry and controlled sources – exclusively. But at the same time, costs need to remain reasonable. And the only way for us to be able to properly weigh these essential conflicts of interest, solve them in a constructive manner, and continue to firmly establish sustainability as a core philosophy throughout the entire Koehler Group is to have all our company divisions work closely together.

Planning Today for the Things That Will Matter Tomorrow

We have taken a series of measures in order to tackle these challenges. For starters, sustainability is now an integral part of our internal communications. And to complement that, we impart our Koehler values, which have naturally always included sustainability principles, the moment we onboard new employees. In addition, our Purchasing team receives sustainable supply chain management training, while our Marketing and Communications department is reinforced by an additional employee whose main task revolves around communicating sustainability-related topics within the company and to the public.

We have upgraded our Sustainability Committee’s monthly meetings from update meetings to an action-oriented discussion format in which all members actively participate and present the progress made in their projects and areas of responsibility. The result is significantly more vibrant and effective teamwork.

In addition to this, we proactively integrate sustainability into our medium-term planning: More specifically, we review planned actions to see which sustainability targets they support and manage budgets in such a way that they will contribute to environmental, social, and business stability in the long term. Moreover, we are gradually refining these processes in order to seamlessly integrate sustainability into everything we do, and check, on a regular basis, whether our targets are still up-to-date or need to be adjusted. With a rolling four-year window, we are already setting the course that will enable us to shape a sustainable future.

By integrating sustainability into all our business processes, we are creating the basis for the future-proof evolution of the Koehler Group in harmony with profit expectations and the needs of our environment and society. We are convinced that financial success and environmental responsibility are not irreconcilable opposites, but rather two sides of the same coin. To put it another way, the only way to be successful in the long term is to manage things in a sustainable manner – for the benefit of the company, our employees, and society at large.