Leading manufacturer of screws and fastening components for car manufacturers embraces efficiency on its way to carbon neutrality
Brugola OEB Industriale has embraced the concepts of sustainability and efficiency by implementing several strategies.
The first results are already tangible now, and other medium- and long-term projects will contribute to the achievement of carbon neutrality.
- Brugola OEB Industriale has embraced the concepts of sustainability and efficiency by implementing several strategies.
- The first results are already tangible now, and other medium- and long-term projects will contribute to the achievement of carbon neutrality.
Italy’s entrepreneurial fabric is rich with companies whose names have contributed to the prestige of an entire industry. These also include Brugola OEB Industriale Spa, known more simply as Brugola, a company founded in 1926 by Egidio Brugola, the man who in 1945 filed and was granted a patent for the hexagonal hollow head screw with a twist shank, known more commonly as the Allen screw. Brugola, which has been included in the automotive supply chain since the 1980s, is now a leading manufacturer of screws and fastening components for the world’s major car manufacturers, a sector that is very aware of green issues and in which companies are required to have a sustainability plan. In the future, it will go more and more in this direction, until sustainability becomes a discriminating characteristic when choosing partners.
The benefits of sustainability
The entrepreneurial vision that guides Brugola includes sustainability and concern for the environment.
“The initiatives we have developed go in two directions. – confirms Jody Brugola, the company’s president – One concerns the direct impact of our processes and, therefore, is carried out with technological improvements to reduce consumption and waste of raw materials and energy. The other involves actions to achieve carbon neutrality. We are a manufacturing company and it would be unrealistic to think of zero consumption, but we can implement offsetting projects to get as close as possible to the concept of zero impact. Each of these steps contributed to approaching and subsequently joining the Energy Efficiency Movement founded by ABB, a true movement designed to implement, improve and share best practices for a more energy-efficient future.”
Brugola’s stated goal is to reduce the CO2 equivalent generated by 70 percent from a base year (2019) and to achieve total carbon neutrality by 2035.
A potential to be fully exploited
In a manufacturing company, processes can conceal interesting efficiency gains. At Brugola we started with some relatively simple interventions, such as upgrading lighting systems with LED lights and recovering oils used in production cycles, to recent projects aimed at managing power grid surges with the goal of reducing machinery consumption by about 5/7 percent.
Great satisfaction has also come from other initiatives, as Marco Cerruti, the company’s HSE manager, confirms.
“We took action on compressed air generation systems, which have always been an important cost item for us. Therefore, we have replaced compressors with more efficient models, which have ensured a reduction in electricity consumption of up to 35 percent for some of our plants.”
“We have gone further,” Cerruti adds, “from the compressors themselves, for example, we have recovered the heat that is generated by reusing it for heating some of the departments, achieving a 40 percent saving on natural gas consumption. Being part of the Energy Efficency Movement is an excellent opportunity to share these and other initiatives, in turn taking cues from the best practices of other movers.”
Compensate, but locally!
Then there is the issue of compensation, usually declined as reforestation of forested areas in remote places around the globe.
“Brugola on the contrary is a company that is very tied to the territory, and that is why we decided to start a partnership with a local company that is involved in creating giant bamboo forests. – concluded Cerruti – In fact, this is a fast-growing plant that is able to absorb up to 36 times more CO2 than a mixed forest in our latitudes. We currently contribute to the maintenance of 6 hectares planted in Lombardy, but each year we increase this to reach the company’s carbon neutrality goal by 2035.”
