How to achieve your sustainability goals?

'A short chain is very important to us'

Bringing down energy bills is an important issue for everyone right now. After all, rates are rising at an unprecedented rate. How do we deal with that? In addition, with regard to the energy issue, there is another angle: sustainability. According to Femke Desmet, in charge of communications and marketing at BUILDING SHUTTERS, as a manufacturer it is on the one hand about taking a critical look at its own production processes and on the other hand about improving the products delivered to the market. "The ultimate goal is energy savings." 

'Made in Belgium' is therefore a very relevant aspect for Femke and her colleagues. "In fact, in all our purchasing we look to see if we can source products and raw materials as close as possible. Of course, not everything is possible in Belgium, but we focus on Europe. A short chain is important to us because then you can save on transport costs and movements, and therefore on CO2 emissions."

But it's also about our own business processes explains Femke. "For example, we've had solar panels on our roofs for years, which made us low-supply. And our gas consumption has almost halved in the last year. That was partly because we have a new blow-off zone in the paint shop, which allows the oven to be set to a lower temperature. But small interventions also contribute. For example, we replaced all the refrigerators, which immediately reduced our consumption. So we did an incredible amount, reducing our energy consumption by 25% last year. We are quite proud of that."

Of course, the question arises whether the market will then see those savings reflected in the prices of the products. "Good question!" says Femke, laughing. "And yes, we were able to manage some price reductions for our semi-finished products. That mainly concerned aluminum. Unfortunately not yet for everything, because of course there are several components that determine a final price, such as the cost of labor. But left or right, the market can assume that we follow developments closely every day, because no one is waiting for unnecessarily high costs."