BUCHEN, Germany—Testing instrument supplier MonTech GmbH started its green initiatives back in 2007, and now the Buchen-based firm is starting to see its efforts pay off.
The company, which boasts more than 75 instrument and software solutions, said its factory in Buchen now runs completely on renewable energy, and MonTech is looking at its next goal: achieving a 100 percent recycling rate.
MonTech's efforts started small, with the upgrades beginning with solar panels and focusing on sourcing energy exclusively from renewable sources as it aimed to eliminate harmful emissions.
"Further expansions enabled the implementation of geothermal energy collection, and intelligent building and manufacturing control systems for energy optimization," the company said in a statement.
Spencer Bagan, MonTech USA national sales and marketing manager, said the parent company's initiatives in sustainability are helped by being located in Germany.
"Europe is taking (sustainability) much more seriously than other parts of the world, which is where our factory is located," he said. "I was at the factory a couple of years ago. I know how much money was being poured into sustainability at the factory. It wasn't complete then, but I saw the trend of where they were trying to go."
An expansion at the Buchen plant six years ago tripled the square footage of the factory, and MonTech used that as the impetus to kick its efforts up another notch, changing many plant operations to make them more sustainable, according to Bagan.
"Within the last year, we really took off," he said. "We are now running on 100-percent sustainable energy. It comes from the solar panels, geothermal energy, recycled energy from machinery. Anything that we can gather as energy from renewable sources; whatever it is we're turning it into something positive."
Besides having enough renewable energy to run the factory, there is a surplus that is sufficient to power 50 households in the area, though currently only 10 are being powered with this energy, the company said.
Bagan said the plant is located in a beautiful area, where you can be driving through the mountains and all of a sudden spot the big red facility, representing MonTech's color scheme. "Buchen, Germany, is a smaller town, so the residential areas I think really benefit from having that support," he said.
MonTech now will look at pushing further to achieve a 100-percent recycling rate.
That includes minimizing process oils on the factory floor; treating and reusing wastewater; recycling all waste and metal particulates into the value chain; and upgrading machinery to recover energy.
In addition, MonTech is adding more electric vehicles to its sales and service fleets in countries where infrastructure is sufficient to accommodate the transition.
While MonTech has made a sizable investment into its sustainability efforts, Bagan said the upgrades already have paid for themselves in the savings to MonTech.
"Europe has a really large focus on sustainability compared to many other countries around the world," he said. "So the initiatives there are much different than the initiatives (in the U.S.) The cost of investment in the U.S. to make something sustainable is much higher. There's more benefit in Europe to that end, and getting that done.
"(Europe) is much more responsive to helping companies get to where they want to be. In the U.S., it's a little different," Bagan said. "In the U.S., the initiatives to get green technology into every company will come in time."