Responsible metal production: Aurubis honored with the 17th German Sustainability Award

Aurubis, a leading global provider of non-ferrous metals and one of the largest copper recyclers worldwide, has received the 17th German Sustainability Award in the Metal Sector category. The most comprehensive award of its kind in Europe recognized Aurubis’ pioneering role in sustainability while honoring the multimetal company for its activities in carbon-neutral and circular metal production. Aurubis numbered among the finalists for the 15th German Sustainability Award back in 2022 and has intensified its efforts to promote sustainability even further since then. This year’s awards ceremony will be held in Düsseldorf on November 28, 2024.

Aurubis CEO Dr. Toralf Haag emphasized: “We are very gratified to have won the German Sustainability Award. It affirms our extensive dedication to responsibly using resources, and shows how we as an industry are part of the solution. This award motivates us in our ambition to be the most sustainable and efficient smelter network in the world. I am proud of and thankful for the entire Aurubis team; it is a true achievement after years of dedication.

Aurubis’ Head of Corporate Sustainability & External Affairs Vedrana Lemor added: “A holistic understanding of sustainability is an essential part of Aurubis’ DNA. We strive to achieve our ambitious sustainability targets with far-reaching activities and investments. We want to steadily improve our ecological footprint throughout the entire supply and value chain. Our metals are the key to an innovative world and essential to the success of the energy and mobility shift.”

Targeted measures for sustainable metal production

Aurubis’ company strategy lays out sustainable business practices and actions conveyed by Tomorrow Metals by Aurubis, a promise to customers. The company pursues a variety of measures to promote responsible production and protect the climate and environment at its international sites. Aurubis has invested more than € 830 million in environmental protection alone since 2000.

The new Aurubis Richmond production site exemplifies how recycling is growing. At the first multimetal recycling plant in the US, Aurubis will process complex metal-bearing recycling materials in the future, returning important raw materials to the cycle. The around € 740 million investment promotes conserving natural resources and Aurubis' ambition to ensure at least half recycled content in copper cathodes by 2030.

Aurubis has also invested in state-of-the-art technologies for the recovery of nickel, tin and precious metals in its Belgian facilities with the BOB and ASPA projects.

Extracting CO2-free industrial heat in Hamburg is another meaningful sustainability project. Using process heat from a subprocess of copper production, Aurubis delivers heat to up to 28,000 Hamburg households — saving up to 120,000 tons of CO2 emissions in the city of Hamburg annually.

Based on the Group-wide decarbonization roadmap with the goal of achieving carbon-neutral production well before 2050, Aurubis is taking a technology-neutral approach to gradually converting its processes. Here Aurubis has installed hydrogen-ready anode furnaces at its Hamburg plant, which will enable fossil fuels to be replaced by hydrogen in the future. Using only hydrogen would reduce CO2 emissions by roughly 5,000 tons per year. The new anode furnaces are helping to decarbonize Aurubis’ production even before enough hydrogen comes on the market at competitive prices, as they work more efficiently and consume about 30 % less natural gas, for a potential savings of nearly 1,200 tons of CO2 per year.

At its Bulgarian site, Aurubis has turned to photovoltaic plants for renewable energy, further reducing CO2 emissions. The complete solar park will allow Aurubis Bulgaria to cover about 10 % of its entire electricity needs with solar power, avoiding up to 28,000 tons of CO2 annually.

The Aurubis site in Olen, Belgium uses sustainable energy as well, with 90 % of its entire power consumption covered by offshore wind energy. This will reduce the Aurubis Group’s carbon footprint by an additional 420,000 tons over the duration of the 10-year contract.

Thanks to its many targeted measures, Aurubis has succeeded in reducing the carbon footprint of its copper cathodes, the standard product in the copper industry, by over 40 % in the past 11 years. This means they have less than 60 % of the global average CO2 footprint for copper cathodes.

About the German Sustainability Award (GSA)

In 2024, the 17th installment of the GSA will be awarded to pioneering contributions to the transformation towards a sustainable future. It highlights the best examples demonstrating how to accelerate ecological and social progress. The purpose of the award is to motivate all of the key players to make the shift, help them form networks across borders, and promote partnerships. It is the most comprehensive award of its kind in Europe with six competitions and more than 3,000 national and international applicants. The distinction is guided by the targets of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and thus the key transformation areas such as climate, biodiversity, resources, supply chain, and society. The GSA is awarded as part of German Sustainability Day, which has developed into the leading conference on the topic of sustainability since 2008. More information at www.nachhaltigkeitspreis.de/en/