The prize was received at a ceremony in Brussels yesterday by Patrick Danau, plant director and spokesman of the management of AUDI BRUSSELS S.A./N.V. He stated, “We at Audi are proud and delighted to win this year’s ‘Trends Business Tour Award.’ This is an achievement of our entire team!”
The jury found that Audi Brussels focuses consistently on innovation and sustainability. According to jury chairman and editor of the weekly magazine Trends-Tendances Guy Van den Noortgate, the car plant in Forest, a suburb of Brussels, is especially successful in combining business activity with environmental protection: “Sustainability is a firmly established principle at Audi. It is still by no means normal for companies to invest in sustainability. Large companies often find it difficult to give up their current approach. At Audi, things are different.”
Audi places great priority on environmental protection, maximum efficiency and the conservation of natural resources in all of its activities. For example, Audi has a photovoltaic system with a total area of approximately 37,000 square meters, the biggest in the Brussels region. And a new heat pump has been installed in the new paint pretreatment shop. The recovered heat is fed back into the production process, saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions. With this environmental commitment, Audi is fulfilling its customers’ expectations and recognizing societal changes all over the world.
Starting in 2018, the first purely electrically powered car in the company’s history will drive off the assembly line at the Brussels plant. The factory is now being prepared for production of the new E-SUV. Plant director Patrick Danau believes it is important that all changes at the plant are made in compliance with the highest environmental standards: “Our approach to producing automobiles is that intelligent and sustainable cars must be produced in a plant with the same virtues. All production standards must focus on this principle.”
By 2018, Audi Brussels aims to improve key environmental figures such as energy consumption, water consumption, solvent use, waste production and CO2 emissions by 25 percent compared with reference year 2018. The plant already uses green electricity and is therefore CO2 neutral. Like other Audi plants worldwide, the Brussels plant is a pioneer of location-based environmental protection and applies a certified environmental management system. Audi Brussels renewed its EMAS certificate just recently. EMAS (Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) is a voluntary instrument of the European Union, which supports companies and organizations of all sizes and sectors with the continuous improvement of their environmental performance.
In total, more than 50 companies competed for the “Trends Business Tour Award” this year. The environmental prize has been awarded for three years now by the weekly magazine Trends-Tendances, the auditing firm BDO and the financial-services company ING. Each year, a seven-member selection commission with representatives of those three companies recognizes companies that have made valuable contributions in the area of environment with new ideas, creativity and dynamism. The jury also considers the participants’ dialog with their employees as well as their social responsibility.