Linked with the new ‘Making a Positive Difference’ corporate theme and the presentation made in Paris on ‘Sustainable Development in the Composites industry’ during JEC World 2017, Scott Bader has recently kicked off a Group wide strategic sustainability project, supported by ‘The Natural Step’, a specialist NGO which helps companies transform business activities towards a fully sustainable basis addressing both ecological and societal factors. Scott Bader is now actively looking for partners to join them on this transformational journey to achieve new, long term sustainability goals.

This new sustainability initiative is led by Jean-Claude Pierre, Group Chief Executive Officer and the Scott Bader Group Executive. The ultimate aim is to fully combine the three company “pillars” of: Ecology, Humanity and Business, into an integrated and coherent approach to the company’s way of doing future business, while remaining a globally competitive player for customers of its composites and speciality chemical products, and a leading provider of technology solutions.

The ‘Sustainability Roadmap’ steering and project teams have already been begun work. Team members include people from across the global Scott Bader Group with different functional knowledge and expertise and age profile. External, expert support for the project is being provided by ‘The Natural Step’, a NGO partner “for organisations ready to address humanity’s grand challenges to create a better future”. The Natural Step team of specialists help organisations and individuals understand and make meaningful progress to identify and implement new sustainability objectives, using methodologies which help an organisation to accelerate achieving desired sustainability goals by identifying new opportunities and finding cost effective alternative approaches, which can dramatically reduce the ecological and social impacts of the business. Over the last 25 years, The Natural Step has helped major global multinationals including: Panasonic, Nike, Ikea, Philips, Rohm & Haas Dow and Akzo, define, plan and implement an effective sustainability journey.

As part of a communication to all Scott Bader employees at the internal launch of this new Sustainability project earlier this year, Jean-Claude Pierre stated: “Our intention is not to just tick a sustainability box. This new sustainability project aims to create a road map which will put Scott Bader into the top league of companies globally which have a clear ambition and long term strategic commitment to put care for the global ecology at the core of how it does business today and in the future, for long term sustainability.”  Pierre went on to explain that: “The aim is for Scott Bader to actively lead and contribute towards building the type of responsible society that is aligned with the visionary corporate, social and environmental ideals in our commonwealth constitution, as laid down by the company’s founder, Ernest Bader, over 60 years’ ago. We want to continue using our chemistry expertise to innovate responsible solutions to market needs which use sustainable resources to minimise any environmental impact. We know it will be a challenge to shift current thinking from seeing environmental protection as a cost burden and constraint, to instead being an opportunity to innovate in term of products, processes, supplies, logistics, and current business models.  We also know we cannot do this alone. The project team will be looking to find like-minded partners to join us on our sustainability journey.” This project will investigate opportunities to be more sustainable across the whole value chain from raw materials to “end of life” and identify the areas where collaboration and wider industry co-operation is needed.

Because of the importance and long term implications of this project for the future of Scott Bader, the members of the steering team and project team come from across the group and all the key functional areas of the business including R & D, Operations and Commercial, with a significant proportion of team members being younger employees. All team members have a genuine passion for driving change and finding ways to be more sustainable.  Having kicked off the project last month, the initial objective is to identify and then start implementing a number of defined actions by as soon as 2018. A number of ongoing environmental project initiatives are already in place and being implemented to reduce energy consumption, such as replacing old technology lighting with LED lights in all Scott Bader facilities.

A number of product and process related innovations have already been developed by Scott Bader to improve the environmental impact and sustainability for producers of composite parts. These include the use of 100% lead free pigment pastes worldwide, and a new ‘zero styrene’ gelcoat which was officially launched last month at JEC World 2017 in Paris; this latest gelcoat technology innovation, is already specified and in full commercial use by a leading global wind turbine blade producer.

For more information about the Scott Bader Group, its full range of solvent and water based speciality polymers, synthetic resins, and its range of polyester resins, gelcoats, bonding pastes and structural adhesives for manufacturing high performance composite materials, visit www.scottbader.com .