Tom joined GKN Automotive in January 2023, bringing more than 15 years’ experience in sustainability teams within global organisations. In this time, he has set out to ensure that the sustainability agenda is driven as a collective effort.
With more of our customers requesting ever greater visibility of our sustainability commitments and the data we’re collecting, it’s critical to establish a strong culture around sustainability across our 25,000 employees globally and throughout our supply chain. This has been a core focus for me since joining GKN Automotive over a year ago, working with people across continents and functions to deliver our sustainability strategy and accelerate progress against our targets.
As a trusted tier one supplier to over 90% of global car manufacturers, GKN Automotive has an important role to play in the decarbonization of the automotive industry, and as a global organisation in 20 countries we have social responsibility to the communities in which we’re present. This global responsibility requires a global solution.
Earlier this year, we reached a significant milestone in our journey, receiving verification from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) – a global body enabling businesses to set ambitious emissions reduction targets in line with the latest climate science – on our near and long-term emissions reduction and net-zero targets. This is a great achievement, and it has helped us to set our ‘north star’, showing in clear, measurable terms exactly what we’re aiming for.
Before we set the targets, a lot of work went into modelling what’s possible. For example, auditing our sites and understanding how we purchase electricity, which is the biggest operational part of our carbon footprint. In a complex, multi-faceted organisation with a global reach, this was a significant task but one that was essential to setting our path forwards.
Now we’re focused on meeting our target of being net zero by 2045, requiring a cross company effort. Encouraging a positive culture around sustainability and embedding it throughout the organisation will be critical to our accelerating our progress.
The great thing about sustainability is that everyone has a role to play, whether that’s on the environmental side or social responsibility and governance.
I regularly meet with our manufacturing teams that are continuously looking at how we can improve things like energy efficiency at our sites and considering operational opportunities such as on-site solar power. Our manufacturing facility in Bruneck, Italy, is a good example of our on-the-ground teams implementing sustainability improvements. The plant has been powered by 100% green electricity since 2012 and, in 2023, installed solar panels to generate its own renewable electricity on site.
In addition, a groundwater cooling system installed at the plant saves 1MWh of energy annually and incorporates a heat recovery system that means waste heat from machinery can be used to supplement the hot water and heating supply in our buildings, thereby reducing the amount of energy the plant uses. As well as a transition to more efficient ventilation and LED lighting solutions, a managed switch to new facilities within the plant is significantly reducing its gas consumption and CO2 emissions.
Another of our sites in Vigo, Spain, held a sustainability competition for employees to propose their own ideas to help improve the environmental efficiency of their workplace. The winning entry determined that the use of a new product - Renoclean - will allow one of our key pieces of machinery to run at a lower temperature, and our boilers to be turned off during the summer months. This project alone will reduce the site’s gas use by over 2% per year.
Meanwhile, our engineering teams are looking into the life cycle of our products and how we can reduce embodied carbon that is produced during the different life-phases – from manufacturing, transporting, usage and disposal. We have already started to embed sustainability into our systems engineering process to ensure that when we are designing our products, we consider the carbon impact from the outset.
We’re also working closely with those outside our organisation in our supply chain to ensure that we are sourcing our products and materials responsibly. To help with this, we ask that the top 80% of our strategic suppliers provide us with their sustainability roadmaps and targets.
The great thing about sustainability is that everyone has a role to play, whether that’s on the environmental side or social responsibility and governance, so my job is to make sure that it is deeply embedded across our organisation. From our engineering teams looking at how we can reduce the carbon footprint of our products to our manufacturing teams and then procurement, we’re all working as a team towards an end goal.
