Enabling sustainable progress
Preserve a livable planet for future generations. This goal increasingly determines the actions and thinking at WIKA – and makes sustainability a driver for innovations.
Sustainability, as we understand it, has many facets.
It includes ecological, social and economic aspects.
Ecology
The demands we place on our ecological endeavours are: to use resources as sparingly as possible, to minimise emissions along the entire value chain, to enforce the highest environmental standards and to think more in terms of circular systems.
Society
On a social level, we create a modern and trustworthy working environment for our employees, work on a basis of partnership with our suppliers and support education and development projects worldwide.
Governance
In addition, we expand local cooperation, provide innovative impetus for our markets and, thanks to a high level of in-house manufacturing depth, we can control a large part of the conditions and effects of our economic activities. With production, whose ecological footprint is constantly decreasing, WIKA will become increasingly more sustainable. And with solutions that enable others to implement efficient, and therefore resource-saving, processes.
Sustainability is teamwork – and we are committed team players. Accordingly, we want to drive forward the transformation of the economy together, and thus preserve the beauty of our planet for future generations.
Our vision for tomorrow
WIKA’s sustainability endeavours are diverse. Based on a materiality analysis, in which external and internal stakeholders identified the most-relevant topics for WIKA, targets for greater sustainability were defined and corresponding measures developed.
Environment
Reduction of direct and indirect emissions (Scope 1 & 2)
We are consistently reducing our emissions through more efficient processes, green heating systems and the gradual switch to renewable energies as our primary source of electricity.
Development of sustainable technology and innovations
In 2024, we will increase the proportion of sustainable materials in new developments by five percent and aim to reduce the footprint of our products. Each product should have a positive impact on at least three SDGs.
Society
Fair, team-oriented and trust-based cooperation
We define employee retention as the basis for our future development. We focus, in particular, on protecting the health and safety of our team.
Responsible relationships with our business partners
By 2030, over 90 percent of our purchasing volume for production will be covered by our Code of Conduct.
Governance
Focus on the improvement of our markets
With success stories from the field, we show how easily our customers can organise sustainable processes and reduce their ecological footprint.
Participation in ratings and their improvement
In the future we will be taking part in the independent rating of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and are aiming for the silver medal in the EcoVadis Ranking 2024.
Taking responsibility for our environment
The protection of the climate and nature is more urgent today than ever before. As a company acting globally, we see it as our responsibility to minimise the impact of our activities on the environment. Therefore, we are focusing on renewable energies, reducing our emissions, developing efficient solutions and increasingly thinking in cycles.
Where emissions are created
An effective lever against global warming is to reduce energy consumption and the associated emissions. By establishing energy-efficient processes and gradually switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, we are paving the way for low-emission production. Thanks to innovative technologies, our products should also save energy and thus greenhouse gas emissions during use.
Energy consumption at WIKA
All production requires energy – from the transport of goods, material processing and industrial processes to the heating of buildings. In total, WIKA consumes around 117 gigawatt hours of energy per year for its commercial activities. This is roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of around 33,000 two-person households. To cover the energy demand, WIKA utilises both fossil fuels and renewable energies – for example through the company’s own photovoltaic systems in Switzerland, Austria and India. A continuous expansion of such systems is planned and being realised.
Circular economy
Once produced, measuring instruments should be used for as long as possible. However, the recycling of defective instruments and the handling of would-be waste must also be rethought. For this reason, the focus is increasingly shifting to material cycles with the aim of achieving greater resource efficiency.
Repair instead of replacement
With our calibration service, which protects components from incorrect loading through long-term accuracy, and a high repair capability, we ensure that the service life of our products is as long as possible.
Using recycled materials
We prefer to use easily recyclable, single-origin materials in our products. Materials that have already been recycled will also be increasingly incorporated into our material cycles in the future.
SF6 gas solutions and closed-loop handling
1 kg SF6 gas has, as the strongest known greenhouse gas, a climate impact equivalent to 24 t of CO2. In order to prevent leakages, we take care of the provision and installation of high-precision measuring instruments and the intelligent online monitoring of SF6 systems. We also use SF6 for calibration and test processes. After use, the gas is pumped safely into special gas cylinders and sent to our SF6 partner.
People at WIKA
We are committed to trusting working conditions and supplier relationships and offer a wide range of opportunities for professional and personal development.
Ensuring good conditions
Even with more than 11,000 employees worldwide, the WIKA Group has remained a family business. Today, as in the past, we are therefore committed to every single employee. This also includes always ensuring working conditions in which family and career can be harmonised, employees can play an active role in shaping the company and are paid fairly. We show our employees our appreciation with a wide range of benefits – from medical offers to a company bike.
Occupational health and safety
We are committed to a sustainably healthy and safe working environment. For this, we offer safety training and organise workstations based on the latest findings. In addition, preventative measures and individual risk assessments at the individual sites keep health protection high. You can find out exactly how we implement this in our sustainability report.
Actively promoting health
For better health, each subsidiary offers a wide range of services such as health checks, nutritional advice, sports programmes and mental health services. Sporting events are also an important part of our activities. In Poland, for example, an annual volleyball tournament has become established. In 2023, the WIKA relay marathon took place for the 16th time at our headquarters in Klingenberg am Main, for which numerous employees travelled from all over the world.
Safeguarding human rights
Human dignity is inviolable – therefore humane working conditions are a basic requirement. The WIKA Code of Conduct prohibits any form of forced or compulsory labour. The prohibition of child labour is also part of our policy statement. Abuses within the company must be reported immediately. Our suppliers sign the WIKA Code of Conduct and thereby also undertake to enforce the guidelines in their production facilities.
Training and further education as a success factor
Whether ATEX training, IT training or language courses – we promote the skills and talents of our employees. For this, we offer themed training programmes as well as personnel development measures. We also develop customised concepts for specific qualification requirements. We also encourage employees to take the initiative and subsidise proposed training courses.
In 2023, each employee of the WIKA Group spent an average of more than 12 hours on training and further education.
Great challenges require good leadership
Sustainability is a management task and a shared responsibility
The strategic direction of WIKA includes sustainable development through digitalisation and decarbonisation. This means that sustainability issues are prioritised. Guidelines, targets and strategies are jointly addressed, implemented and monitored by the sustainability team and the board of directors. You can find out more about our organisational structures in our sustainability report.
Making interests visible and representing them
To protect the rights and interests of our employees, we have set out the right to collective bargaining and freedom of association in our Code of Conduct (CoC) in accordance with the laws of the respective country. At the Klingenberg headquarters, for example, a works council represents the collective interests of the employees. WIKA also uses association work to represent the company’s interests – and therefore the interests of its employees – to the outside world.
Methodical supplier management
Our supplier management is holistic and ranges from monitoring the procurement market to searching for, selecting, qualifying and evaluating suppliers and actively developing our suppliers.
To ensure the quality of our products, we enter into close and long-term partnerships with a limited number of suppliers.
Expanding and utilising local networks
To keep transport distances short, production materials are purchased on the local procurement market wherever possible.
Continuous control
We regularly check suppliers with regard to their social and ecological standards.
Committed to environmental protection
Responsible and conscious handling of available resources and the environment is a central component of our sustainable behaviour. We therefore ensure compliance with national and international environmental laws, guidelines and specifications.
Safeguarding working conditions
Respect for human rights is non-negotiable for us. Our WIKA Code of Conduct (CoC) therefore prohibits all forms of forced and child labour. Other rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of religion are also part of our CoC and our policy statement on our commitment to human rights.
When it comes to sustainability, WIKA makes a significant contribution with technical know-how in combination with the quality and precision of the products offered.
Because: “Sustainability starts with measurement.“
Through innovative solutions and a wide range of products, WIKA supports customers with every measurement in diverse applications to promote sustainable process improvements. We are also working constantly on expanding our product portfolio in order to continue to provide customers with the best-possible support on their path towards sustainability. Through the newly built development centre, WIKA will continue to promote this innovative and creative product development in the future.
Examples of successful areas of application:
