Two Brunvoll employees inspecting a thruster

Low-impact production

Icon - ResponsibleIcon: Sustainable development goals. 9: Industry, innovation and infrastructureIcon: Sustainable development goals. 12: Responsible consumption and production

Our ambitions: Brunvoll will ensure minimal environmental impact in both our facilities and value chain, from material procurement to end of life. We will continuously work to reduce our GHG-emissions and material footprint.

Our achievements in 2022

  • We increased capacity in our own production by investing in modern production technology.
  • We met the requirements of the Norwegian Transparency Act.
  • We invested and installed energy solutions that reduced our direct emission by 67%.

Modern production and integrated value chain

We focus on in-house production in our facilities located in Molde, Volda and Dalen, avoiding outsourcing of important skills and knowledge. Investments in modern production technology and lean principles help us continuously improve our productivity, which is essential when producing in a high-cost country.

Our philosophy is that an integrated value chain provides us with a competitive benefit granting us control, flexibility and capabilities both in daily operations and for the purpose of innovation.

Responsible supply chain

Brunvoll’s suppliers are subject to our environmental criteria in addition to screening on quality, price and delivery precision. Through our purchasing policy, we favour long-term partnerships and the use of local suppliers when they can offer competitive conditions. Our suppliers are made familiar with our ethical guidelines, and it is a prerequisite that they comply with international law on wages, working conditions and health & safety. Our supplier mapping shows that a large portion (>80 %) of our Tier 1 suppliers are situated in the Nordics and northern Europe.

From 2022 we have a separate Supplier Code of Conduct to further communicate our expectations and requirements towards our suppliers and business partners.

Logistics and transportation of goods is an important part of our supply chain, and we have an ambition to collect data on our impact from this activity and reduce this impact over time. We have a high ratio of upstream goods transported by truck, and a high ratio of downstream goods being transported by sea freight. We will report on emissions from transportation of goods from 2023.

Material consumption and circularity

A large proportion of our scope 3 emissions is found in the life cycle of purchased goods, noticeable in our consumption of metals such as steel, cast iron and bronze-alloys. Our goal is to measure and increase the fraction of recycled content in our input materials, in order to support the development of a more circular economy and lower the footprint of our products. A parallel goal is to use less materials by increasing resource efficiency. We will report on emissions from purchased goods from 2023.

Suppliers mapping

Figure based on share of invoiced amount and supplier billing address. Countries with < 2 % share are omitted (9 %).  

Waste

We have a well-functioning waste management system in place. We sort and deliver multiple fractions of excess material to proper waste management companies. In 2022, we sent 818 tons of waste to recycling, while 182 tons were sent to further processing. From these 182 tons, 62.5 % was sorted and 37.5 % unsorted. Our ambition is to continuously decrease the total amount of waste generated and increase the amount of sorted waste sent to further processing to 80 %.

Waste sent to further processing (%)
Sorted: 62,5 %
Unsorted: 37,5 %

Energy consumption and carbon footprint from operations

The energy consumption at our facilities is largely covered by purchased electricity and district heating (> 96 %). In 2022, we made investments both to reduce our direct emissions and increase energy efficiency, and the activity at our sites was somewhat lower in 2022 than in 2021.  The result is a reduction in direct emissions (scope 1) by 67 % from 2021 and a reduction in energy consumption (scope 1 and 2) by 9 %. Norway is close to self-sufficient with hydroelectric power, allowing industry such as ours to create value with low scope 1 and 2 emission. Energy is nonetheless a resource that we must use with care, and we continue to invest in solutions and technology that help us become more energy efficient and completely mitigate direct emissions. By 2025, our ambition is to reduce our scope 1 emissions by 90 % and decrease our overall energy intensity with 5 %.

From 2022 we report Greenhouse Gas emissions per Value Added (GEVA), which is a measure of emissions (tCO2e) divided by Value Added (Revenue + payroll) in MNOK. An annual 5% reduction in GEVA is accepted as a guideline for corporate alignment with the goals in the Paris agreement (Randers 2012 and OECD 2012). From 2021 to 2022, we had a reduction in GEVA by 41.2 %, mainly due to a large drop in scope 1 emissions.

Energy consumption by source (%)
Electricity: 86,8 %
District heating: 10,5 %
Heating oil: 1,3 %
Diesel: 1,3 %
Gasoline: 0,1 %

Emissions

Scope 1: 56,7 tCO2e
Scope 2: 97,7 tCO2e
Total: 154,4 tCO2e

Energy

Total energy consumption: 9 256 797 kWh
Energy intensity: 8,33 kWh/kNOK

End of life

Our products are built to last, and often outlive the ships they are installed into. Our products have long lifecycles and are designed for maintenance and technical upgrade. At end of life of a ship, our products are recycled or sold on a second-hand market. We are following the markets trends and possibilities within future business models where an even higher degree of circularity may be achieved. We are curious about the business case of leasing our products and the potential for capturing value that previously have been lost at end-of-life through refurbishment rather than recycling.