30.08.2023
The renewable raw material wood commits us to a resource-saving approach to business. And everyday experience shows that sustainable management can be achieved in many ways. That is why we at the Kuratle Group use a wide variety of options to make our complete solutions environmentally friendly. Take heating, for example: in the cold months, we use production waste to supply various locations with heat.
Wood waste accumulates every day in our production halls. As a sustainable provider of solutions all-around timber, it makes sense for us to recycle this valuable production waste. Wood waste is a valuable commodity, and we use it as wood chips for our heating system. We use waste wood from various panel materials and packaging. We have also installed a standardised flue gas filter. So you could say that industrial prefabrication, our entire production process, is part of our ecosystem (alongside trade and logistics) and produces an important raw material for environmentally friendly wood chip heating.
What exactly are wood chips? They are pure wood in chopped form, which is used as a renewable fuel. And wood chips offer many advantages: their calorific value is around 4.0 kWh per kilogram. Wood chip heating systems are particularly economical in larger building complexes, such as our company premises. And unlike heating systems that use fossil fuels, they are extremely sustainable.
The CO2 emissions balance is astonishing: the amount of CO2 released during combustion is exactly the same as the amount that was bound during the growth of the wood – a zero-sum game that benefits nature and the environment. In addition to the closed CO2 cycle, there is another compelling benefit: there is no need to transport the CO2-neutral fuel. After all, we use our own resources from in-house production with high added value locally – it couldn't be more local or regional.
We have installed wood chip heating systems at four of our sites. Leibstadt plays the biggest role: at our main site, 1,100 tonnes of wood waste are generated in production each year. We convert this into 860 kW of heating power on site. In Niederbipp (400 tonnes = 600 kW), Farvagny-le-Petit (200 tonnes = 300 kW) and Märstetten (200 tonnes = 300 kW), wood waste is also collected and used for the sustainable heating system.
Incidentally, we use a total of 1,900 tonnes of wood waste for thermal recycling. This corresponds to approximately 1% of the weight we transport by road over the course of a year. And with this volume, we can heat quite a lot of space. In Leibstadt, this amounts to 40,000 m2 of storage space and 400 m2 of office space. The ratio of storage to office space is similar at the other locations: Niederbipp heats 22,486 m2 of storage space with wood chips and 1,975 m2 of office space. Farvagny-le-Petit (storage: 8,250 m2, office: 900 m2) and Märstetten (storage: 9,276 m2, office: 1,228 m2) have roughly comparable figures. This means that our wood chip heating systems supply a total area of 84,515 m2 (total warehouse space: 80,012 m2, total office space: 4,503 m2).
Heat pumps are a completely different matter – and are of course just as good in terms of sustainability. We have a location in Alpnach that has a heat pump. This heats a total area of 4606 m2. This is another step for the Kuratle Group towards making its heating system more environmentally friendly and providing the market with sustainable, comprehensive solutions for everything to do with wood.
