Henkel AG was founded by Fritz Henkel in Aachen in 1876. Starting with the production of a universal detergent, the company now has 50,000 employees worldwide, producing a wide range of products from laundry and home care to beauty care and adhesive technologies. Henkel holds leading market positions both in the industrial and consumer sector and is well known for brands such as Schwarzkopf and Persil. The Dax 30 Company has its headquarters in Dusseldorf, Germany and is globally active, with a strong presence in emerging markets.

One of the main values of the company is commitment to leadership in sustainability. To this end, maintaining a balance between economic success, environmental protection and social responsibility is vital. Their sustainability strategy is simple: achieving more with less.

Henkel aims to reach the “Factor 3 Goal” by 2030, which means that all Henkel products and processes should be three times more efficient as they are today. This aim addresses one of the central challenges of the future: decoupling growth from resource consumption. Instead, Henkel wants to create more value for their costumers and consumers, for the communities they work in and for the company itself. The company is also constantly working on the reduction of its environmental footprint. They were recently ranked number 1 in the Household & Personal Products category in the social and environmental performance.

In 2008, Henkel systematically anchored the focal areas of its sustainability strategy into the innovation process. With the Henkel Sustainability#Master®, the company has developed an evaluation system to demonstrate specific hotspots along the value chain and across the strategic focal areas, where innovations can have the greatest impact to ensure that they will improve the overall sustainability profile of its products and processes.

Another of the company’s sustainability goals is to improve the production process. With Project Xina, Henkel will double the capacity and reduce the environmental impact of its largest detergent production site in Latin America. A new heat recovery system was already installed to save energy. The new system uses waste heat from the sulfonation plant to preheat the air for spray-drying powder detergents. A two-step reverse osmosis process to reduce wastewater from the liquid detergent production and to increase the yield of recycled water has also been introduced to the factory. All measures should be fully implemented in 2015, making the factory a sustainability and safety benchmark.