4Minimizing Environmental Impact

4.1Energy and carbon management

The usage of non-renewable energy is associated with considerable carbon emissions and thus contributes greatly to global warming. As a company with high energy consumption, the Cicor Group is aware of its impact on the environment and the resulting responsibilities and obligations. Reducing greenhouse carbon emissions not only fulfils customer requirements but also affects the company’s reputation within the industry. Increasing the company’s energy efficiency and thus reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions also positively affects procurement costs.

Besides reputational damage, potential carbon emission levies on procured energy feature a risk for Cicor’s business. The Group has a number of policies and measures in place, to build resilience and to maintain competitiveness compared to other technology providers. The Group establishes responsibilities, provides guidance on reviewing energy consumption, and formulates standards and norms for energy procurement.

Improving energy and carbon efficiency

Cicor envisions to reduce its climate impacts on multiple fronts simultaneously. In particular, purchasing energy from certified renewable sources is at the heart of Cicor’s decarbonization strategy. Among its initiatives, the Group is also replacing outdated, low-efficiency equipment, invests in modern, high-efficiency production lines, and maximizes the energy efficiency of buildings by regularly maintaining lighting, ventilation and cooling systems, and by using natural light optimally. Another pillar for reducing the Group’s environmental footprint is the extension of in-house electricity generation. In 2023, photovoltaics plants were installed on the rooftops of the sites in Arad and Thuan An City. Furthermore, the Wangs site will pursue the installation of an additional solar farm on its rooftop in 2024.

Overall responsibility for energy and carbon management lies with the maintenance and production manager (site manager). The Group tracks its energy and carbon management through specific KPIs, including the consumption of energy. In 2023, Cicor implemented the monthly consolidation of environmental data on group-level. In this way, the Group more closely monitors its carbon emissions and its performance in energy consumption to pave the way to execute an extended Corporate Carbon Footprint Accounting (CCF) for the first time in 2024 as part of the CSRD reporting.

Environmental performance

Cicor collected data about the electricity consumption and fossil fuel combustion for heating purposes of all its sites for the years 2022 and 2023. The measures implemented to increase the share of renewable electricity prove to be gradually improving. In 2023, almost 20% of electricity was procured from regenerative sources according to our site’s declarations. Cicor uses mainly natural gas to keep its facilities at ambient temperature, but also works with a significant portion of district heat. While the absolute consumption and emission values remain largely constant in 2023 compared to 2022, Cicor was significantly more productive. This mirrors in a 24% increased revenue in 2023 compared to 2022. The Scope 1 and 2 carbon intensity of the Group’s operations was thus significantly reduced from 38 tCO₂e/Mio. CHF revenue to 31 tCO₂e/Mio. CHF.

4.2Resource efficiency of production

Cicor is aware of the negative environmental effects of disposing waste in landfill dumpsites as well as the emissions associated with incineration. Negligent pollution would lead to reputational damage. As a company generating hazardous waste in significant proportions, the Group strives to continuously improve its resource efficiency through reduction of material consumption, reuse of scrap and recycling of waste. Besides reducing the environmental impact, resource efficiency helps minimize production costs.

Minimizing impacts

Cicor manages its production processes to improve efficiency, with several performance initiatives in place. The Group implements new technologies, minimizes material consumption, lessens technological scrap, optimizes stocks, and strictly monitors the expiration dates of received materials and chemicals.  The company aims to actively influence the transition to a sustainable future by implementing the usage of renewable resources where possible. Cicor promotes the circular economy by selectively collecting waste for recovery or recycling and also recycles electronic parts for its customers under contractual agreement. The Group uses recycled raw materials for injection molding (excluding automotive and medical parts) and sells waste, including unused packaging materials and scrap metal. Cicor has further implemented processes for waste reduction in accordance with ISO 14001 across the entire Group. The effective usage rate of raw materials is greater than 98%, while molding yield is more than 99%. As an example, in cooperation with the World Resource Company (WRC), the production site in Boudry has developed and introduced a copper sludge recycling process with a greatly reduced carbon emission footprint in 2022. In addition, wastewater treatment was fully internalized, and the recycling of plastic waste was driven forward.

Furthermore, Cicor’s operational excellence program, which aims to increase resource efficiency, was implemented globally at all production sites. This includes the introduction of a monthly monitoring system of key figures on water consumption, waste and scrap generation, waste treatment, and productivity at site level, allowing the Group’s performance to be tracked closely.

Waste and water management

The total waste amount generated in Cicor’s operations increased slightly in 2023 compared to 2022 from 926 t to 963 t. Considering the growth of the company and its production volume this is not surprising. 

4.3Environmental management and compliance

The Cicor Group is aware of the importance of environmental management in two respects: Not only does Cicor aim to make a contribution to a low-emission future, but the Group also strives to avoid the financial and reputational consequences of non-compliance with international and local laws and regulations and public expectations. As a company with a high energy consumption due to electroplating and other energy-intense chemical processes, Cicor recognizes its responsibility to monitor and reduce its environmental impact. From a business perspective, management of Cicor’s environmental footprint reduces costs by saving energy and differentiates the company from its competitors, increasing its attractivity for investors, customers, and potential employees.

Certified management approaches

The Group’s main concept to ensure effective and compliant environmental management across its individual sites is alignment with renown international certification standards. In recent years, Cicor has progressively managed to address its site’s environmental impacts in line with ISO 14001.The Group heeds the associated criteria by acting in accordance with legal requirements, assessing results with audits and improvement programs where new objectives are specified. Following the ISO guidelines, Cicor identifies its environmental impacts and controls them through its operations, in addition to pinpointing any risks and emergency situations that could arise. Cicor has instilled a culture of establishing objectives and defining roles, responsibilities, resources, and competencies, as well as authorities.

Advances beyond certification

The group aligns its communication and the development of new as well as the revision of existing policies with these norms. In addition, Cicor envisions to improve its environmental management and compliance beyond the existing initiatives and practices in order to meet increasingly stringent environmental laws and regulations to remain fully compliant with all legal requirements. For this purpose, the Group cultivates a company culture of continual communication, training and awareness raising on this topic. In 2023, there were no environmental violations identified.

Some production sites have a zero environmental accidents objective. The site in Boudry, for example, is adhering to the OPAM law (Ordonnance sur les accidents majeurs) and the federal program of energy monitoring and saving, in addition to submitting an official annual report to its local environment authorities. The site in Boudry employs a health and safety and environment engineer and two full-time equivalents (FTEs) in its wastewater treatment facility.

Cicor uses KPIs to monitor its environmental management and compliance. KPIs include the number of sanctions from local authorities for environmental infractions, compliance rate with legal obligations, and waste recovery fulfilment rate. Audits are executed and their results evaluated. Further monitoring is accomplished through inspections and test results from suppliers.