Carbon-neutral manufacturing by 2040: FACC commits to sustainable packaging

As an aerospace company with an export quota of 100%, logistics, and thus also packaging, play an important role at FACC. Thousands of aircraft parts have to be safely packaged every month - due to FACC's high transport volumes, optimizations have a lot of leverage here. By introducing a new and sustainable packaging concept, FACC has now taken a further major step. The goal is to achieve carbon-neutral manufacturing by 2040.

As of now, FACC AG is relying on sustainable packaging: for smaller parts, only packaging and filling material made of recycled cardboard are used, avoiding all plastic. For larger packaging units, destined for overseas deliveries and complex systems requiring additional filling material, air cushion foil is produced at FACC from sustainable materials. It has a recycled content of 40% and is produced in a 100% carbon-neutral process. It is essential that the foil is inflated with air only after reaching its destination: in this way, transport of the foil requires around 25 times less space than before. This alone saves 30 truck trips per year. In total, this amounts to CO2 savings of approximately 40 metric tons. This is equivalent to the consumption of around 20 single-family homes per year.

The foil was tested and certified by FACC specifically for use in aviation. Two newly acquired machines will supply logistics with the sustainable packaging material in the future. For the past three years, FACC has also been using sustainable eco-liners for transport. Including these, annual CO2 savings amount to more than 400 tons.

Sustainability meets efficiency

"In the best case, greater sustainability goes hand in hand with greater efficiency," emphasizes CEO Robert Machtlinger. "With these measures, we have not only minimized our environmental footprint, but also cut costs." In addition, total packaging effort at the newly constructed ergonomic packing table was reduced by half by improving processes. This translates into significant savings, given that approximately 100,000 m² of cardboard are required per year.

For transport within Europe, FACC has been using round-trip boxes instead of packaging material for years. These are unloaded by the customer, returned to FACC and then reused for shipping.

Full transparency for customers

A QR code on each packaging allows customers of FACC to centrally access total CO2 savings on a website. Moreover, the packaging design was revised and a new logo for green logistics was developed.

Carbon-neutral production by 2040

All production processes at FACC are to be carbon-neutral by 2040. In order to achieve this goal, FACC is currently working on a number of small and large adjustments. Space heating is supplied 100% by geothermal energy and heat recovery, and in addition to the company's own photovoltaic system, the company only sources electricity from hydropower. Energy-saving LEDs are used for lighting.