Target
Increasing the share of post-consumer recycled wood from 42% (2020) to 65% (2030).
We use our strength as the largest user of recycled wood in Germany, to consistently improve the cascading use of wood. Thereby we contribute to a ‘circular economy’, whereby nothing is wasted – i.e. end-of-life wood products become valued raw materials rather than waste in landfill sites.
We want all wood products, including our own, to be repurposed. In practice, our cascading use system means that already today we use predominantly, with a share of 57.3%, post-consumer recycled wood.1The second-largest share is comprised of sawmill residues, representing 27%. The remaining 16% is accounted for by thinnings and damaged wood, mainly from domestic forests. To ensure that our fresh wood and decorative paper are responsibly sourced, we only use raw materials from controlled sources. In addition, 93% of the wood resources we use for production stem from Germany, the remaining 7% from directly neighbouring countries.
1 As post-consumer material we consider prepared recycling wood from damaged pallets from packaging, used furniture or kitchens as well as internal rejects; the latter comprise only 2.4% of the total recycled wood.
Recycled wood: Our performance and target
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Target 2030 | |
| Share of post-consumer recycled wood in our wood mix in per cent | 41.7 | 46.2 | 48.1 | 50.7 | 53.5 | 57.6 | 65.0 |
The volume of this material available to us is affected by reuse and recycling initiatives in the European Union, economic development, patterns of consumer behaviour and furniture retailers reclaiming used furniture. In addition, if we can help influence the behaviour of consumers and businesses, then we may see increased availability of post-consumer wood.
Whilst we want to obtain greater quantities of recycled wood, we also insist on using only the highest quality materials. Our boards are regularly tested in our central lab in Arnsberg, and we work with our suppliers to achieve 100% compliance with product quality rules.
For our high quality products, we use wood recycled according to the standards of the German Waste Wood Ordinance, which is the strictest in Europe, and is largely free of chemical, metallic or mineral impurities.
Nearly 84% of the wood raw materials used in our products are sawmill residues and recycled wood.
Case study
Sorting, cleaning and testing recycled wood
Our yield rate is an expression of the quality of our main raw material: recycled wood. As the material comes into the plant we want to minimise all losses of material as we clean it. The very high yield rate achieved at our sites is down to our consistent investment in state-of-the- art technology. Our sorting and cleaning processes, supplier relationships, and rigorous testing are key to our success. The ‘sorting tower’ aims to ensure no unwanted materials, such as plastics, arise in our production lines. Indeed, we are pushing the boundaries of yield maximisation: the high number of sorting processes in our towers means increasingly finer fractions of raw material become available to us. In effect, we are reducing our reliance on fresh wood by-products by using recycled wood fibres as many times as possible.
... OF FOSSIL GLUES WITH RENEWABLE ORGANICGLUE IN THE ORGANICBOARD PURE PRODUCT. A PARTICLE BOARD WITH 100% RENEWABLE BINDER AND 100% RECYCLED FIBRE.
TARGET
Develop specific indicators to assess water consumption in accordance with CSRD
WATER
As a result of the re-validation of our materiality assessment, we reprioritised the topic of water with regard to our impact. Despite most of our operating sites being located in water-rich regions, we acknowledge that water scarcity is a global problem, increasingly aggravated by the climate crisis. Consequently, how we manage water resources is also becoming strategically more important.
WATER MANAGEMENT
We are committed to using water resources responsibly and are on our way to transparently documenting our water needs. Transparent documentation is a prerequisite for adapting our water management to the expected changes in water availability due to climate change.
Target
100% of our production sites will have implemented a Biodiversity Management Plan by 2030
Biodiversity is a strategically important topic for our company. We evaluated our impact on biodiversity using a biodiversity check for companies provided by the public platform “Unternehmen Biologische Vielfalt” (UBi). The results indicate that our company has a major impact on biodiversity and therefore also has great potential to implement improvement measures. The evaluation is ongoing and suitable indicators are still to be established.
In 2023, we have joined the "Biodiversity in Good Company" Initiative to advocate for the protection and sustainable use of biodiversity in partnership with other companies as well as political and societal stakeholders. The Initiative members are small-, medium-, and large-scale companies from Germany and other countries and a variety of sectors. They have committed themselves to including the protection of biological diversity into their sustainability strategies and environmental management by signing the Initiative’s Mission Statement and Leadership Commitment.
Target
Increasing the share of certified fresh wood to at least 70%
Although fresh wood, such as thinnings and damaged wood, accounts for only around 20% of our total wood volume, we have started to support one of our largest fresh wood suppliers in a renaturation project. The supplier – a large public forest landowner – has replaced spruce monoculture with a wetland landscape and site-adapted, resilient mixed-species forests. This project is being continued as a pilot, and additional projects are currently being discussed with other fresh wood suppliers.
Since 2007, we have sourced fresh wood and decor paper exclusively from controlled sources. In 2025, the proportion of certified fresh wood was 64.5%.
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