- Transparency and openness to the public is the basic attitude of the company
- Sustainability programme was further developed
- Clear commitment to sustainable forest management and climate protection
- Report was subjected to a critical review by the Austrian Federal Environmental Agency
HS Timber Group today publishes the Sustainability Report for the 2019 financial year, for the companies in the Group's timber industry division.
It is the second Sustainability Report for which the company has involved both internal and external stakeholders, prior to the preparation of the report. The relevance of individual topics for the stakeholders and the company's options for action were assessed. As a result, transparency, customer satisfaction and a secure, traceable supply chain continue to have top priority for HS Timber Group.
With the aforementioned, a total of 11 central fields of action were identified on which the company would like to continue working.
"Wood products from sustainable forestry bind CO2 and the by-products of the sawing process are used to produce heating materials that replace fossil fuels, such as pellets and briquettes. This means that the products have a positive impact on the environment and can help to cope with global warming," explains Michael Proschek-Hauptmann, sustainability expert at HS Timber Group. "The power plants and energy use in the production process have also been planned in a sustainable manner. In combined heat and power plants, by-products from wood production, primarily bark, are burned to generate heat and electricity for the production process. The surplus is fed into the public grid as green electricity".
The Sustainability Report, including the greenhouse gas balance of the group of companies, was subjected to a critical review by the Umweltbundesamt GmbH in Austria (the Federal Environment Agency in Austria) and the feedback was incorporated. The statement of the auditors was very positive and is reproduced in the report: "The critical review panel found the overall quality of the Sustainability Report, especially regarding materiality, entirety, balance and design to be high and adequate for the purpose of the report. The data listed is comprehensible and comprehensive. The report includes positive aspects of the company's sustainability performance, but also addresses existing challenges and current or previous difficulties.”
Proschek-Hauptmann adds: "We are proud to have successfully implemented the 2017 Sustainable Supply Chain Action Plan and to present the status of its implementation in this report. We will continue to pursue this path consistently."
Moreover, “We are proud to have successfully continued the path of the 2017 Action Plan for a Sustainable Supply Chain and to present this report now. But we are, of course, also pleased to receive further suggestions for our sustainability programme, as well as the report in particular," concludes Proschek-Hauptmann.
The report is available for download here.
Feedback to the report can be addressed directly to: michael.proschek[at]hs.at.
About HS Timber Group
HS Timber Group has its roots in a traditional Austrian family business with more than 400 years of experience in wood processing. Today, the group is mainly active in the timber industry, but also in the sawn timber trade and in the bioenergy production. It operates three sawmills and two wood panel production plants in Romania, as well as another sawmill in Germany. With around 3,400 employees, the HS Timber Group is one of the leading companies in the woodworking industry in Europe. The company's products are exported to more than 70 countries. HS Timber Group GmbH is a company of the ‘Evergreen Privatstiftung’.
