TPI July 2013

Proud to be part of the cutting edge A green talk with Victor Vladimirov, environment, energy and safety expert of the Hobas Group

❱ You mentioned that Hobas is putting effort into many environmental areas. Where is the group particularly active? There has been a lot of development in waste management. First, Hobas attaches a lot of importance to employee trainings and workshops, and then we have re-evaluated our existing waste management partners and have also put new ones in charge to optimise, for instance, recycling. A good example for this is recycling waste oil at the Hobas Plant in Houston, Texas. The management always follows everything very closely and introduced a corporate Waste Report which spurs us to continue reducing waste in production step by step. Then there is energy management: once we had implemented ISO 14001 in the whole group, we took a closer look at energy consumption. We established an Energy Report which showed us where we could reduce the consumption of resources such as gas, water, diesel and electricity. Some of our factories have invested in new equipment, such as a brand new regenerative thermal oxidiser at Hobas Germany. Closed cycle process water systems have been introduced at the factories to reduce water consumption. Apart from this, we are looking into live energy monitoring systems which will tell us the status of consumption any point in time and which notify us if there are irregularities that need to be tended to immediately. ❱ The Hobas Group consists of many organisations in different countries. How do you decide on environmental measures, and why is investing in environmental protection so important to Hobas? Hobas is a business and has to secure its standing in the market just like any other business. Of course there has to be some sort of economic benefit for the companies taking environmental measures. There needs to be balance between increased efficiency as well as adapting to an increasingly environmentally aware market and environmental concern per se. It’s a win-win situation, really, in which we reduce our costs and protect the environment. At Hobas Austria, for instance, we have invested in a new waste shredder, and the shredded waste is subsequently used as fuel at the neighbouring cement factory. This was a big investment that increased efficiency and fulfilled the requirements set by Austrian legislation.

❱ How do you see the global developments regarding environmental awareness? Victor Vladimirov: The complete society including more and more companies is increasingly aware that each of our choices impacts the environment. Everyone is responding with growing care as well as better environmental performance and particularly municipalities are a lot more aware of their responsibility in this area. In some parts of the world they have begun requiring proof from companies regarding their environmental performance – a pre-requisite for winning a job. In the Netherlands, for instance, proof for environmental achievements is partly given more importance than the price. Australia is another environmentally aware role model, particularly regarding the reduction of carbon emissions, and some states in the US request certificates such as ISO 14001. Authorities around the world will be tightening legislation step by step; they are obliged to by the social progress. ❱ How has Hobas been reacting? Which developments have you observed since you started working for Hobas in 2008? We can be proud to say that we are part of the cutting edge in our market sector. Meanwhile all of our factories are ISO 14001 certified. The first implementation of ISO 14001 was launched in 2008 at the production plant Hobas Austria, and we received our certificate from TÜV SÜD about a year later. At the time, only 16 per cent of players in our industry in Europe and the US were ISO 14001 certified. When we repeated this study in 2010, more than a quarter had the certificate, so you can observe an increase here. The more authorities ask for this kind of proof the more this trend will of course increase. However, there are other environmental activities Hobas pursues, such as the product life cycle analysis and carbon footprint which are not required for the ISO 14001 but complement it very well. Examples are the project calculation for Czajka, a trenchless project in Poland, or carbon neutral pipes in Australia. It should also be mentioned that Hobas is involved in standardisation work in Europe since the standards for these calculations are still to be fully established in order to make values comparable.

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July 2013 Tube Products International