The Volkswagen Group has once again honored its best suppliers with the "Volkswagen Group Award 2024", with a total of ten companies being honored in ten categories. More than 250 guests from 29 countries traveled to this year's 20th awards ceremony.
"We were delighted to receive the award from Oliver Blume, CEO of the Volkswagen Group. This award from VW shows once again that we are on the right path towards a more sustainable industry with our company and our "Salzgitter AG 2030" strategy. It is important to us that we continue to establish ourselves as a group in a world of holistic production and service cycles. Especially with the globally central issue of CO2 reduction, we want to position ourselves for the future with our products. The award in the "Sustainability" category impressively proves that we are succeeding in doing this," explains Gunnar Groebler, CEO of Salzgitter AG.
Award for Closed Loop
Salzgitter AG has been recognized on the topic of sustainability, particularly for the so-called "closed loop" in material supply that has been in place for several years (the collaboration between VW and Salzgitter AG can even look back on over 60 years). A closed loop, for example, involves the scrap generated during VW production being returned and, for example, melted down again in the electric steelworks in Peine, in order to then be processed for reuse in Salzgitter. This then creates a "green" steel coil, which is fed into production at VW. In 2023 alone, the material exchanged in this way amounted to around 74,000 tons.
"With this closed loop between our two companies, which has now been recognized by VW, we have succeeded in significantly reducing the CO2 footprint and decisively driving forward the decarbonization of the supply chain. For many of our customers, it is already important to receive a physically real, CO2-reduced product. And that is exactly what we can offer with the steel we produce as part of our SALCOS® (Salzgitter Low CO2 Steelmaking) program,” says Eike Brünger, Managing Director Sales and Logistics, Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH.