Rakem Group and sustainable supply chain
While many manufacturers talk about improving the sustainability of their business, very few have actually done so. And it’s no surprise – reducing your environmental impact means making changes to your own business but also requires you to find and successfully work with partners who share your vision.
At Rakem Group, we’re ahead of the crowd. We have a long heritage of putting people and planet first, and we’re proud of what we’ve done already to improve our environmental impact. Sustainability is a fundamental part of our DNA, and we align with the UK’s net zero targets, aiming to achieve net zero emissions by 2030. This ambitious goal underpins all our environmental strategies and initiatives, supported by initiatives including a quality, health, safety and environment (QHSE) framework. QHSE ensures that environmental factors and processes are integrated seamlessly with the rest of our business processes – and that they are continuously adapted and improved over time.
But our sustainability is only partly about how we manage our own business – it’s also about the way we manage our whole value chain: choosing to work with partners who are transparent about their own environmental approach and credentials, and to be that partner ourselves.
Minimising our environmental impact
Directly reducing emissions
Understanding and improving your greenhouse gas emissions is core to any environmental strategy, and Rakem Group is no exception. We’re committed to fully calculating our Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, to help us understand and reduce our overall carbon footprint. With Scope 1 and 2 emissions, we’re focused on the carbon produced by our business either directly (Scope 1) or indirectly through the energy we consume (Scope 2) and we continue to work on calculating and reducing both.
We want to go beyond the industry norm to produce products that are as sustainable as possible: our R&D teams are continually on the lookout for new and innovative raw materials or production processes that can deliver products that are more environmentally sensitive yet remain highly performant. Some of our Cemkem additives and admixtures, for example, significantly improve the environmental footprint of construction projects, e.g. by reducing the amount of raw materials or water required in the mix.
Meanwhile, we are also continuously looking for new ways of reducing energy usage across our production processes, facilities and company-owned vehicles,and we’re transitioning to renewable energy sources wherever possible. We operate a number of waste reduction programmes, including employee education, and for remaining waste we work with responsible rubbish disposal brokers who guarantee carbon offsetting.
Valuing our whole ecosystem
As manufacturers ourselves, we understand that environmental impact is significantly affected by your wider value chain. We’re in the second year of evaluating our Scope 3 (value chain) emissions, including upstream emissions from our suppliers and downstream emissions related to customers and product distribution. We actively collaborate with our suppliers and customers to improve our overall environmental impact, for example reusing product packaging across the distribution chain wherever possible.
In particular, we understand our own role as a supplier. We are an important part of our customers’ value chains and we are expected to – and do – provide evidence of sustainable operations. Many of the environmental decisions we make focus on supporting our customers’ own sustainability goals, for example making product packaging using materials that are both sustainable and easily recycled. As an ISO 14001-certified business, we have to adhere to a framework for managing our environmental impact – so we understand, and are committed to, the sustainable supply chain that our ISO-certified customers require.
Supporting our customers to reduce their impact
By working closely with our own suppliers, we’re able to assure high levels of sustainability and environmental adherence in the products we produce. But we’re also able to support our customers with other sustainability needs:
- Sustainability advice. Many of our customers want to improve the environmental footprint of their products or manufacturing processes but don’t know where to start. Our leading-edge technical services offer access to new, unique chemistry and environmental research, and can help our customers create the strategy and deliver the practical support needed to make the change.
- Practical product improvement. Many of our customers want to adapt product formulations to improve their environmental footprint without affecting performance, or to swap out problematic raw materials for newer, more sustainable options. We have the people and experience, as well as the testing and research resources that can help address any manufacturing or sustainability challenge.
Your sustainable supply chain partner
Sustainability and respect for the environment are central to the Rakem Group purpose. We have achieved Ecovadis certification which recognises our commitment to sustainable practices and our community engagement is award-winning. We believe that highly sustainable products and processes can also be highly effective and cost-efficient, and we enjoy the challenge of making this happen, for our own business and for our customers.
