Water Power — The Source of Success

A moun­tain river known as the Gutach winds its pow­er­ful way through the pic­turesque town of Horn­berg. Around 5,000 peo­ple live in this munic­i­pal­i­ty in the cen­tral Black For­est region of south­ern Ger­many, a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for vaca­tion­ers. The source of the Gutach is a mere 12-mile hike away. Its tur­bu­lent path cross­es the fac­to­ry grounds of Durav­it, a com­pa­ny deeply root­ed in the area with more than two cen­turies of tra­di­tion. The river plays an impor­tant role in the ener­gy-inten­sive ceram­ic pro­duc­tion process­es for this renowned glob­al maker of bath­room and san­i­tary ware prod­ucts. Durav­it places a pre­mi­um on using water resources with as much care as pos­si­ble. Ever since it was found­ed, the com­pa­ny has been com­mit­ted to sus­tain­able action. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, one might say, is in its genes.

But that alone is not enough for Stephan Tahy, who became Duravit’s CEO in 2020. In order to advance sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the future and to make it the guid­ing prin­ci­ple for all the company’s actions and future chal­lenges, he has anchored it in Duravit’s strate­gic cor­po­rate goals and brand val­ues. Durav­it focus­es on four of the 17 Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) defined in the Unit­ed Nations’ “Agen­da 2030”: respon­si­ble con­sump­tion and pro­duc­tion, clean water and san­i­ta­tion, cli­mate action, and good health and well-being. The company’s over­ar­ch­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty goal is to become car­bon-neu­tral by 2045.

The focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty is already evi­dent in the Durav­it brand name. It con­tains the word “dura,” which stands for longevi­ty — and there­fore a sus­tain­able use of resources. It is unsur­pris­ing, there­fore, that the com­pa­ny is decid­ed­ly opposed to a throw­away men­tal­i­ty. “That’s one of our great­est con­tri­bu­tions to sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” says Tahy. “We stand for prod­ucts you can enjoy for a life­time.” The fam­i­ly-owned com­pa­ny describes itself as the only man­u­fac­tur­er to give cus­tomers a life­time guar­an­tee for its ceram­ic prod­ucts. In addi­tion to san­i­tary wares, Durav­it has been pro­duc­ing high-grade bath­room fur­ni­ture since 1992 at its plant in Schenken­zell, around 20 miles from the main site in Horn­berg. Here, too, the com­pa­ny places a pri­or­i­ty on long ser­vice lives and on wood from domes­tic sources with PEFC-accred­it­ed and thus sus­tain­able forestry.

Out­stand­ing design that wins mul­ti­ple awards has been one of Duravit’s unique sell­ing points for decades. It joins sus­tain­abil­i­ty, excel­lence, and well-being to form the brand’s four core val­ues. “Our aim is to cre­ate time­less design,” says Tahy. “So we don’t go run­ning after the lat­est trend or look­ing to add frills. We say that time­less design is part of our very DNA.” Durav­it there­fore cul­ti­vates long-term glob­al rela­tion­ships with icon­ic design­ers like Philippe Star­ck, which ensure the endur­ing qual­i­ty of its products.

In addi­tion to the pri­or­i­ty on dura­bil­i­ty for its prod­ucts, the com­pa­ny devotes con­sid­er­able atten­tion to recy­cling. That starts back in the prod­uct devel­op­ment stage. “Each new prod­uct will now be crit­i­cal­ly exam­ined with respect to sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” says Tahy with empha­sis. These efforts have already pro­duced a show­case prod­uct: Sus­tano, the first recy­clable min­er­al-com­pos­ite show­er tray. It rep­re­sents a gen­uine­ly new devel­op­ment on the mar­ket thus far. At the company’s east­ern Ger­man site in Meißen, more than 200 tons of raw mate­ri­als are cen­trifuged out of the mass of mate­r­i­al in the waste flow and chan­neled back into pro­duc­tion. The cen­trifuge sched­uled for instal­la­tion at the Horn­berg site is expect­ed to recov­er near­ly 10 per­cent of the mate­r­i­al used as of 2024, amount­ing to 550 tons a year at an annu­al pro­duc­tion vol­ume of around 6,500 tons. Recy­cla­bil­i­ty is also high on the agen­da for ship­ping and deliv­ery. Pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als are made to be as recy­clable as pos­si­ble, with a con­tin­u­ous reduc­tion in the share of plastics.

As for water needs and use, Durav­it can already point to a num­ber of sus­tain­abil­i­ty-relat­ed achieve­ments. The ceram­ics maker has reduced the vol­ume of water need­ed to flush its toi­lets from 6 to 4.5 or 3 liters. The toi­lets it has sold in Europe over the past decade have there­fore saved around 290 mil­lion cubic meters of water a year — with no decline in the qual­i­ty of the flush­ing process. But as Tahy insists, “We’re not yet sat­is­fied. We keep work­ing on the tech­nol­o­gy in order to lower water con­sump­tion even fur­ther in the future.” The com­pa­ny has also suc­ceed­ed in opti­miz­ing how it uses water for pro­duc­tion. A cir­cu­la­tion sys­tem at the Horn­berg site already recy­cles 60 per­cent of the water from the pro­duc­tion process back into use. And one of the CEO’s spe­cial con­cerns is to ensure clean drink­ing water for all of his employ­ees through­out the world, espe­cial­ly in regions like the site in India where clean drink­ing water is by no means a given. A water intake facil­i­ty on the fac­to­ry grounds there pro­vides employ­ees and their fam­i­lies with high-qual­i­ty potable water.

The CEO has also set an ambi­tious tar­get for pro­tect­ing the cli­mate. Durav­it wants to be entire­ly car­bon neu­tral by 2045 — along its entire value chain. This is no small mat­ter, because ceram­ics pro­duc­tion plants are still strong­ly depen­dent on gas as the fuel for heat­ing their kilns. “Car­bon neu­tral­i­ty by 2045 might not look very ambi­tious at first glance,” admits Tahy. “But in fact it is, because reach­ing this goal requires a major tech­no­log­i­cal advance. We have to define new ways of fir­ing ceram­ics, and are in the process of putting a quan­tum leap into practice.”

On July 13, 2023, a major mile­stone was passed on the road to a sus­tain­able future. That was the day the com­pa­ny laid the cor­ner­stone in Matane in the Cana­di­an province of Que­bec for the world’s first cli­mate-neu­tral ceram­ics pro­duc­tion site. The plant is expect­ed to make 450,000 ceram­ic pieces a year for the North Amer­i­can mar­ket. Durav­it is assum­ing a pio­neer­ing role here, because this will be the sector’s first kiln to run on elec­tric­i­ty from renew­able hydropow­er. Com­pared to con­ven­tion­al gas kilns, it will save more than 9,000 tons of CO₂ a year at full capac­i­ty. More­over, all the raw mate­ri­als will be sourced direct­ly from Cana­da and the USA, which means short trans­port dis­tances and more sus­tain­able logis­tics — as well as addi­tion­al car­bon reduc­tions of more than 1,500 tons a year. “We are very proud of our trail­blaz­ing role in pro­mot­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the san­i­tary ware indus­try and address­ing the chal­lenges posed by cli­mate change,” says Tahy. “We’re set­ting stan­dards for inno­v­a­tive solu­tions in a sec­tor known for high ener­gy needs.”

Durav­it has laid the tech­ni­cal foun­da­tions for inte­grat­ing green hydro­gen as soon as it becomes avail­able on the mar­ket. Sim­u­la­tions have already been run in a test project with Linde, the world’s leader on the mar­ket for indus­tri­al gases. This could reduce the future need for fos­sil fuels in pro­duc­tion. Anoth­er major step on the road to cli­mate neu­tral­i­ty is the plan to have solar power sup­ply 50 per­cent of the elec­tric­i­ty need­ed at all the sites worldwide.

To keep trans­port routes as short as pos­si­ble and there­by min­i­mize the asso­ci­at­ed car­bon emis­sions, the com­pa­ny has been rely­ing for decades now on its proven “local for local” strat­e­gy and region­al prox­im­i­ty to pro­duc­ers and sup­pli­ers. “Durav­it has always tried to have its sites make the great­est pos­si­ble use of local resources,” observes Tahy. Local roots are also evi­dent in the company’s com­mit­ment to its home site in Horn­berg. For exam­ple, the ceram­ics pro­duc­er pro­vides finan­cial sup­port for humus acqui­si­tion to farm­ers in the Black For­est con­ser­va­tion area. Farm­ers use the organ­ic mat­ter to enrich regen­er­a­tive soil, which in turn binds CO₂. As Tahy explains, “We con­tribute to sus­tain­abil­i­ty right at our site — and this type of com­mit­ment has an authen­tic qual­i­ty that embod­ies our approach.”

Authen­tic­i­ty ulti­mate­ly plays the key role in Tahy’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty cam­paign. “We’ve always tried to find the right path for Durav­it. And that means being hon­est and account­able in every­thing we do.” For Tahy, authen­tic­i­ty means embracing sus­tain­abil­i­ty in all the company’s activ­i­ties, both exter­nal and inter­nal — and active­ly involv­ing all the employ­ees. “We want sus­tain­abil­i­ty to be evi­dent in every­thing we do. We want to be very clear that we’re pur­su­ing it on the strate­gic level as well. And final­ly, we want to make peo­ple aware that sus­tain­abil­i­ty is some­thing that starts at home and spreads out into the world at large.” With inter­nal actions like the “Putzete” clean­ing cam­paign that was launched in 2022, Durav­it draws atten­tion to the topic and gives every­one a chance to join in. The cam­paign invites employ­ees to clean the area around the com­pa­ny grounds, there­by mak­ing a per­son­al con­tri­bu­tion to ensur­ing it remains in good shape. For inhab­i­tants of the Black For­est, that’s actu­al­ly a point of honor — the boss doesn’t have to ask them twice. 

For Stephan Tahy, prof­itabil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty are not con­flict­ing aims. Quite the con­trary, in fact. In his eyes, eco­nom­ic suc­cess and growth are accel­er­a­tors for run­ning and fund­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects — and there­by enabling the com­pa­ny to active­ly pur­sue and reach its long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals. After all, the more a com­pa­ny grows, the more finan­cial resources it has to con­vert tech­nolo­gies, pro­mote inno­va­tions, and build solar power facil­i­ties. As the CEO explains, “Durav­it has always under­stood the impor­tance of bal­anc­ing prof­itabil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty — with a long-term per­spec­tive. We’ve set ambi­tious sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets, but we’ve also only taken steps that are actu­al­ly pos­si­ble. We are meet­ing both chal­lenges: prof­itabil­i­ty and growth on the one hand, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty on the other.”