Hear from our CEO and CSO about our Green Lights Strategy and how it incorporates What We Do
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Our product
portfolio
Sustainability performance and a positive contribution to society are important aspects throughout the lifespan of our products.
Managing our product portfolio
Our overall aim is to transform the coil coating industry for the better. Smart solutions, sustainable innovations and efficient indicators that help us to drive transformative decisions are our driving forces as we continuously strive to develop our net-sustainable product portfolio.
What is the Beckers Sustainability Index?
The BSI is our holistic tool that helps evaluate the sustainability performance of our products. It looks at several parameters to assess the material and functional sustainability of a coating. This assessment leads to the classification of the product in one of our four categories.
“Achiever” class leads with outstanding sustainability, “Qualifier” class indicates clear sustainable benefit or functionality and “Improver” class indicates better environmental performance especially relating to the raw materials used. “Concern” class products have sustainability issues and should be discontinued within five years.
The BSI is a key tool to measure and communicate our progress toward our ambitious sustainability targets.
Our overall goal is to provide coatings that offer sustainability benefits at every stage of their life cycle, and we aim to achieve 50% sales from the BSI Achiever class by 2030. Products classified with BSI Achiever, reach the highest level of material and functional sustainability. Our ambition is to phase out products from Beckers’ product portfolio that have issues with their sustainability performance within five years of being identified. Our aim is to have zero products classified as BSI Concern by 2030.
How does a product become a BSI Achiever?
Beckers Sustainability Index (BSI) helps us to assess our coatings, assigning them to one of four distinct classes that signify their sustainability impact.
“Achiever” class leads with outstanding sustainability, “Qualifier” for clear sustainable benefits and “Improver” products have better environmental performance. “Concern” class products have sustainability issues and will be discontinued within five years, underlining our commitment to responsibility. The scoring method evaluates not only the environmental footprint of our products but also their “handprints,” or positive contribution to society. With Ernst & Young’s review of the BSI tool’s methodology, process and results against ISO 14020 and ISO 14021 standards we’ve ensured its transparency and credibility.
A long tradition of developing more sustainable solutions
For many years, we have promoted the use of renewable raw materials, developed coatings with a reduced climate impact and avoided scarce materials. Some of the coatings we sell also provide proven functional sustainability benefits for customers and society while in use.
Leading change with our third-party verified BSI
Our improved version of the BSI launched in 2023, raised the bar when it comes to sustainability in the coatings industry. The BSI is a multi-criteria product assessment methodology covering environmental and societal topics and is tailor-made for our industry. It incorporates existing indexes to measure sustainability performance from a material and functional perspective.
This allows the products to be evaluated based on the sustainability performance of the raw materials (Beckers Sustainability Index Materials – BSIM) with the help of four indicators: Sustainable Mineral Indicator, Sustainable Organic Component Indicator, Climate Change Mitigation Indicator and Non-toxic and Non-persistent Substance Indicator. The evaluation also covers the added value of the product based on the contribution of the functionality of the coating to the sustainability performance of the coated object (Beckers Sustainability Index Functionality – BSIF).
The BSI is verified by the auditing firm Ernst & Young (EY) and aims to contribute to overcome the greatest challenges in the industry.
Combining groundbreaking UV/EB curing technology with developed tools and processes
Together with our customers, we provide engineering and construction materials that are essential to modern society. At the same time, the industries we serve are currently among the largest emitters of GHG emissions. At Beckers, we have developed an in-house Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool to enable us to produce more accurate assessments of our coil coating products. We support our customers by decarbonizing coil coatings and by regularly quantifying the environmental impact and carbon footprint of the products we sell. In 2024, we further developed these capabilities and our carbon footprint modeling tool.
Following the launch of our cutting-edge ultraviolet and electron-beam (UV/EB) coil coating curing technology in 2023, we have conducted the first LCA to compare UV/EB with existing coil coating technologies. The LCA quantified the sustainability benefits including significant CO2e savings and enhanced resource efficiency compared with conventional coil coating techniques. The LCA comparison showed that sustainability-related savings can be realized due to the cold-cure UV/EB process as it does not require a gas oven, which eliminates the need for natural gas as well as reduces the energy consumption. UV/EB curing also requires much less paint per square unit than standard solvent-based formulations. In 2024, we built on the first LCA to evolve our modeling tools and our means of testing potential formulations in various markets.
Low-VOC coatings and enhanced product lifetime value
VOCs are part of the group of organic compounds that easily evaporate at room temperature when paint is applied. To lower VOC emissions wherever possible, we provide high-performance low-VOC waterborne and high-solid coatings to our customers with less environmental and health impacts.
Additionally, we work to decrease the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a coating solution and the object it is applied to. Coating can also create value by reducing maintenance and operation costs. Our most durable system, RUV5, can significantly extend the lifetime of a building envelope with minimal maintenance, while our self-cleaning coatings reduce people’s exposure to chemicals required to clean surfaces. Our Beckry®Therm coatings can significantly reduce the energy required to cool or heat a building.
Measuring what matters: How we drive sustainability with data and transparency
From our internationally validated Beckers Sustainability Index (BSI) to advanced Life-Cycle Assessments and product carbon footprint tools, we are setting new industry standards for transparency and accountability. Read the full story to see how data-driven innovation is shaping a more sustainable future—one product at a time.
Stories of
transformation
Raising climate awareness internally and among customers
We have rolled out a Sustainability Sales School program – involving a series of workshops designed to engage all stakeholders in understanding and assessing climate risks. One of the key elements of this program is the Climate Fresk workshops. Employees completed the Climate Fresk facilitator training, enabling them to lead workshops with customers and other external stakeholders. By the end of 2024, we counted 40 facilitators, 25 internally trained in 2024 by our Global Environment & Energy Manager, a certified “green belt” of the Climate Fresk NGO. We have now facilitators in all our local languages, ready to train our colleagues and partners.
One of the important elements of being a force for good throughout our value chain is to ensure that everyone at Beckers shares a common understanding of what sustainability means for our company and our customers in different contexts. This may sound simple, but general sustainability awareness varies greatly from country to country. In addition, political will and legal frameworks also differ between countries.
The Climate Fresk facilitator workshop, includes 7 hours of dedicated training and idea generation for facilitators. We are now offering half-day Climate Fresk workshops, led by our trained Beckers facilitators, to our customers. One particularly important application of the Climate Fresk tool was during our Marketing workshop, where sales and technical teams gathered to share their expectations and practices to better communicate sustainability to the market. We have facilitators in all our local languages, ready to “fresk” colleagues as well as customers.
In addition, we conducted Sustainability Marketing workshops at all our sites, involving Beckers sales staff, R&D, and purchasing management teams. These workshops help identify our strengths, areas for improvement, and the specific support that each site needs from other parts of the company. The goal of these workshops is to equip local teams with the confidence to engage in sustainability discussions with external stakeholders, including suppliers and customers. The ultimate aim is to raise awareness and drive collective action on climate change, as we can only achieve our ambitious sustainability targets by working together with our entire value chain.
The ultimate aim is to raise awareness and drive collective action on climate change, as we can only achieve our ambitious sustainability targets by working together with our entire value chain.
WHAT.
For 160 years, we continuously advance the performance and functionality of our high-performance coatings, consistently exceeding customer expectations. Our legacy is defined by the stories of how we help transform our industry.
WE.
People are at the heart of our business. Safety, mental and physical health, and leaving a positive impact in the communities where we operate transcend our business.
DO.
Our operations and work with suppliers improve our environmental and social impact. By working with resource efficiency and responsible procurement, we have a positive effect throughout our value chain.