The Standard Vanguard: REMET® UK’s ISO14001 Accreditation

Remet is pleased to announce it’s European Headquarters have been successful registered in accordance with ISO14001:2004, which will complement its current ISO9001 Integrated Management System.

ISO14001 establishes a voluntary environmental management system which shall help Remet publically and independently demonstrate its commitment to our natural environment.

The project has taken a year to complete under the leadership of Alex Spence, in his first management role. Alex graduated from Christchurch University, Canterbury, after reading for a BSc with honours in Combined Sciences.

Alex captured in a written document Remet’s intentions and principles in relation to its environmental performance and then documented Remet’s legal compliance and significant environmental impacts. The environmental impacts were prioritised for action, with SMART objectives set for achievement of the necessary standards and improvements. Alex had to spread the word regarding how these goals would be achieved, not only within the organisation, but vertically into the supply chain and customer base, and put together the justification of the resources necessary to achieve these goals, finally establishing audit schedules to ensure that compliance was met and maintained to ensure that our obligations were met.

Undoubtedly this keeps Remet at the vanguard of high achieving foundry supply companies.

The process has been costly, but has it been worth-while?

Remet is a forward looking company and identified the following areas of added value:

Internal efficiency

• Remet has long adopted a lean manufacturing philosophy, made visible in the work-place by 5S procedures. Over the past year Remet has reduced waste in its operations by streamlining operations to reduce energy and consumable usage. An outward example of this is that paper usage within the office has been reduced by some 50%.

Differentiation

• Not all suppliers in the industry are the same! Remet will be the first major supplier to voluntarily exhibit its contribution to reducing its environmental impact, a factor that customer stakeholders value highly, and will value more in the future.

Financial Savings

• For sure, this is not the major reason why we embarked on the project, however use of power, paper and water (used in cooling) have been reduced. The biggest impact has been the adoption of a low-carbon company car policy, with the use of more efficient and much reduced carbon output engines within the company fleet, carbon emissions per car have dropped by some 40%.

Enhancement of our competitive position

• In the current business climate, end-users and Remet’s customers look to possession of an accredited environmental management standard as a value added contribution by the supplier. More to the point is that in the near future we believe that the accreditation will become mandatory, and a qualification to supply.

Stakeholder Satisfaction

• When we discussed which projects we would want to engage with, there was unanimous support for ISO14001 within the staff body at Remet. All believed that environmental emission was a concern, that it would continue to be so in the future, and that they would prefer to work with a “Green” and sustainable company; consequently all were delighted that this project was adopted and brought to conclusion so quickly.

• When we took the same questions to our customers, all those canvassed declared their support for a long term commitment to a strong environmental policy, many were seeking to attain similar standards themselves, and stated that they would be happy to extend that requirement into their supply chain.

On completion, the Lead Auditor Mr James Hall of Anglo Japanese American Registrars commented: “This isn’t the easiest piece of legislation to gain, and to keep, so congratulations to Remet UK and its team on this excellent achievement.”