Facts and figures 

In the spring of 2022, an energy and raw mater­i­als crisis began in Europe the likes of which we have not seen in the last two dec­ades. The changes in the mar­ket hit the pack­aging industry with full force and changed the entire industry. Depend­ing on the coun­try, the cost of energy in Europe rose to dimen­sions that are new to all of us.

Früh AG has been a lead­er for years in the pack­aging sec­tors of med­ic­al tech­no­logy, phar­ma­ceut­ic­al industry as well as in the chem­ic­al-tech­nic­al sec­tor. Our pack­aging mater­i­als and the asso­ci­ated tech­no­lo­gies are very energy-intens­ive and thanks to the fact that we set the course towards energy effi­ciency years ago, we were well posi­tioned against the energy crisis of 2022. In addi­tion to our con­tri­bu­tion to vol­un­tary energy effi­ciency, which we imple­ment with the Energy Agency for Industry (EnAW), we work with the Eco­vadis organ­iz­a­tion — with sil­ver status.

We achieved the major and for us import­ant effect for energy con­sump­tion with the new con­struc­tion of our pack­aging pro­duc­tion. We have inves­ted in state-of-the-art infra­struc­ture and pro­duc­tion facil­it­ies at our Fehraltorf site in order to ensure, on the one hand, the increas­ing demand for our products, the com­pet­it­ive­ness as well as the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of our pro­duc­tion. For example, we work with the most mod­ern print­ing and lam­in­at­ing machines and a new RNV plant (regen­er­at­ive thermal after­burn­ing). Where­as total energy con­sump­tion in 2014 was 6 mil­lion kWh, in 2022 it was 10 mil­lion kWh. At the same time, we doubled our pro­duc­tion out­put dur­ing this period.

This res­ults in a reduc­tion of 20% in gas con­sump­tion des­pite a massive increase in pro­duc­tion. In the case of elec­tri­city, where we obtain 95% from sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion, we were able to reduce con­sump­tion by over 10%. If we com­pare the energy con­sump­tion in the med­ic­al tech­no­logy area in rela­tion to the pack­aged implants, we have even been able to achieve a reduc­tion of 50% since 2014.

Anoth­er key fig­ure is the kWh con­sump­tion per employ­ee: In 2014, this was approx. 20,000 kWh, cur­rently approx. 14,500 kWh, which cor­res­ponds to an improve­ment of almost 40%. The num­ber of employ­ees was 300 in 2014 and cur­rently around 700.

By invest­ing in for­ward-look­ing and effi­cient pro­duc­tion lines, we have suc­ceeded in massively redu­cing our CO2 emis­sions. The path to sus­tain­ab­il­ity is a cent­ral top­ic at Früh Ver­pack­ung­s­tech­nik AG, which will also accom­pany us in the future.

If you are inter­ested in how the above-men­tioned reduc­tions have been achieved in detail, we will of course be happy to provide you with fig­ures and fur­ther information.