Environmental protection at Berango

Aurubis Berango specializes in the recovery of non-ferrous metals from a variety of material streams.  

The site is situated in Berango, in the province of Biscay near Bilbao. With about 95 employees, the site focuses on complex recycling materials to produce black copper, solder, and minerals. The Berango site, formerly called Elmet, was founded in 1991. Today, the site is a frontrunner in terms of sustainability in the wider area of the entire Basque region. Building on over 100 years of experience, the company supplies a solid base of international business partners and contributes to strengthening the circular economy.

We feel that sustainability and economics go hand in hand. Environmental protection as well as occupational health and safety are essential to all our processes. All employees are systematically trained in environmental protection to support environmental awareness in the workforce. Our management team ensures that all environmental aspects are considered in each process and fully integrated into operational management. The continuous improvement of our product and process designs are thus in line with our measures for ensuring environmental protection.

We regard compliance with environmental laws and regulations as a minimum requirement for our activities. Audits and inspections are conducted on a regular basis and take appropriate actions are taken to continuously improve environmental protection, occupational safety and sustainability for all operations. This is also reflected in certifications such as the ISO 14001 environmental management system (since 1999), occupational health and safety in keeping with ISO 45001 (since 2016 with OHSAS 18001) and  an energy management system in accordance with ISO 50001 (since 2022). All production processes are controlled using the environmental management system and incorporating occupational health and safety requirements.

By operating with specific, mostly custom-made, and high-performance technologies, we achieve exemplary success in environmental protection, while still focusing on further continuous improvement. This intensive work on continuous improvement is also reflected by the implementation of the best available techniques (BAT). Compliance with the requirements of the BAT conclusions were established and verified by the Basque Government authorities in conjunction with the new environmental permit.

By operating at the highest energy efficiency levels, we are setting standards by using advanced technologies that already meet or even exceed the latest requirements.