As a regionally based company, the Zimmer Group takes its responsibility for environmental protection in the region very seriously. This is why it took the 40th anniversary this year as an opportunity to convert production to a sustainable CO2-neutral process.

From now on, the quantities of electricity and natural gas required for production are CO2-neutral. One million kilowatt hours of green electricity per year will come from the Süwag hydroelectric power station in Willstätt, 15 kilometers away. The Zimmer Group generates approximately the same amount of CO2-neutral electricity itself. Several photovoltaic systems are already installed on the company’s roofs in Freistett. At the turn of the year another one will be put into operation on the newly built production hall.

“Consuming electricity where it is generated in an environmentally friendly manner directly on site is a key element of our environmental strategy,” emphasizes Managing Director Günther Zimmer. “This will make the Zimmer Group a further step towards becoming greener and more regional”. In total, these measures will save a total of 5,595 tons of CO2 per year, which corresponds to about 14 fully fueled “jumbo jets”. The climate-neutral ecogas saves a further 295 tons of CO2.

The damping specialist is also taking the next step in terms of electric mobility to minimize CO2 emissions. At both company locations in Freistett, a total of 16 charging points will be set up at the parking lots to charge the electric vehicles during working hours. This is because the vehicle fleet is now also being successively converted to electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

Michael Fischer is the Zimmer Group’s environmental and energy management officer and is committed to continuously optimizing environmental protection performance within the group. The auditing according to ISO 50001 underlines the successful measures. “More than 100 electricity measuring points were installed for consumption monitoring and analysis. This enabled us to identify many more potential savings and to derive measures from them,” explains Michael Fischer. For example, the use of heat pumps for air conditioning the buildings and cooling the machines, optimization of the compressed air network and the switch to LED lighting.

Looking to the future, the Zimmer Group also wants to sensitize its employees of tomorrow to the topic of “environmental protection and energy”. For this reason, five trainees were qualified by the Southern Upper Rhine Energy Chamber of Commerce and Industry and advised by Michael Fischer. As part of the “Energy Scout” project, they looked for new ways to save energy and found them in the compressed air guns that the company needs for production, among other things. The necessary nozzles are now being developed in-house, so that the compressed air guns now consume significantly less energy.