Sustainability

Our committed and qualified employees are by far our most important resource and form the central basis of our corporate success. Accordingly, attracting, promoting and retaining them in the long term is a central core task of corporate management. Against this background, ensuring the satisfaction and integrity of all employees is also a top priority for FRIEDRICH VORWERK. No employee should be negatively affected in his or her - physical or mental - health as a result of his or her employment. For this reason, FRIEDRICH VORWERK makes comprehensive efforts to ensure and actively promote the safety and health of our employees.

Although the prevention of accidents at work is our top priority, actively promoting the well-being and health of our employees is also an important concern for us. For example, as part of our wide range of employee offers, we offer all our employees the opportunity to lease a bicycle with a subsidy from FRIEDRICH VORWERK, to take out supplementary company health insurance or to join a fitness studio.

Our success as a service company is largely dependent on the availability, education and motivation of our employees. However, diversity in terms of age, origin, gender, religion or other personal characteristics and interests of our employees is also of great value to the FRIEDRICH VORWERK Group. We are firmly convinced that it is precisely the diversity of our workforce that gives the group of companies its uniqueness and drives it towards entrepreneurially superior success. For the sake of our sustainable success, it is therefore a central concern of ours to promote a non-discriminatory working environment characterised by respect and openness. This naturally also includes that the selection and promotion of our employees is always independent of ethnic origin, gender, world view, disability, age or sexual orientation. It is based solely on the qualifications and skills of the individual person.

In times of acute shortage of skilled workers, the training and further education of our own junior staff is of elementary importance for the sustainable recruitment of qualified and motivated personnel. For this reason, the FRIEDRICH VORWERK Group attaches great importance to positioning itself internally and externally as an excellent training and further education institution, from classic apprenticeships to internal training and further education programmes to dual university studies. This is the only way we can ensure our own future viability and fulfil our social obligations.

We notice time and again that women are unfortunately still underrepresented in the construction industry. We do not simply accept this circumstance, but are actively engaged in making technical professions in the construction industry more attractive for female specialists and managers. We set ourselves the goal of continuously increasing the quota of women in our company.

As a family-run service company, FRIEDRICH VORWERK attaches great importance to its customers and their satisfaction. Building and maintaining strong, long-term relationships with customers and business partners is crucial for the sustainable growth of the group of companies. FRIEDRICH VORWERK sees itself as a strategic partner along the entire value chain of its customers. The quality of the relationships with them significantly determines the success of the cooperation and subsequently also the order situation and the economic success of the company.

Over the years, we have built a diverse customer base that relies on the high quality and reliability of our products and services. Our approach is to leverage our decades of industry experience and maintain a cooperative relationship with our customers. In doing so, we always strive to continuously develop and optimise our own products and processes in terms of energy efficiency and CO2 emissions. This includes, for example, innovative solutions and components to reduce CO2 emissions in our plant construction projects, the further development of our capabilities in the field of green hydrogen production or the optimisation of plants for the processing of biogenic gases.

From targeted further training measures and long-term cooperation with customers and universities to high-profile lighthouse research projects in-house: we consistently support knowledge management and the innovative strength of our employees on the path to the decarbonised energy system of the future. Be it innovative components for the precise measurement of gas flows, innovative welding processes for the low-loss transport of gases or the piloting of new electrolysis systems, our declared goal is to support the sustainable value creation of our customers with innovative solutions and thus contribute to their long-term competitiveness and the success of FRIEDRICH VORWERK.

At the centre of our commitment to customer satisfaction is the quality of our services, which is closely linked to the DIN EN ISO 9001 standard. This standard serves as an important benchmark for our internal quality management system (QMS) and is thus an essential guideline for our entrepreneurial actions. Compliance with the criteria of DIN EN ISO 9001 is a priority for us throughout the company in order to ensure a consistently high quality of services for our customers. This also applies to the companies that do not intend to obtain external certification.

As an internationally active group in the energy sector, FRIEDRICH VORWERK is aware of its outstanding responsibility for climate protection and attaches great importance to protecting the environment and using valuable natural resources considerately and sparingly in all its activities. The focus is on our efforts to gradually reduce our own energy consumption, to reduce the use of fossil fuels and to sustainably lower greenhouse gas emissions. The FRIEDRICH VORWERK Group strives for long-term growth - in line with the highest environmental and climate protection standards.

Our business model essentially involves the provision of qualified services by our employees or subcontractors at the customer's site or in the public, inner- and outer-city areas. In addition, however, we also operate workshops and smaller production plants that manufacture individual components and important preliminary products for our projects "in the field". Against this background, environmental protection for us encompasses both the work on the numerous construction sites and the activities in our own operating facilities.

We meet our responsibility for environmental protection on projects and construction sites every day by providing innovative products and services that sustainably decarbonise our European energy system. These include high-voltage power lines for the transport of green electricity, electrolysis plants for the production of CO2-neutral green hydrogen or the realisation of large district heating pipelines for the decarbonisation of building heat. Through our innovative products and solutions, we help our customers achieve their own sustainability goals. With our plant in Nesselgrund, for example, we were able to realise the first climate-neutral gas pressure control and measurement system in Germany and thus support our customer ONTRAS Gastransport GmbH in implementing the energy transition.

However, climate protection also concerns the continuous increase in resource and energy efficiency at the group's own operating sites as well as internal processes on the many construction sites. In the long term, the energy supply of the main operating sites of the FRIEDRICH VORWERK Group is to be completely climate-neutral.  An important step in this direction is the hydrogen tower lighthouse project in Wiesmoor, where the local energy supply is being converted to regenerative power generation and the use of green hydrogen. This will significantly reduce the site's carbon footprint and realise an important pilot project for Lower Saxony's hydrogen economy.

All employees and companies of the FRIEDRICH VORWERK Group are required to adhere to the established guiding principles and standards with regard to environmental protection. The focus is on proactively preventing excessive harm to the environment - and not just eliminating it after the fact, accepting permanent consequences. This is not only required by our clients in the context of project tenders, but is also in line with our own corporate mission statement. The intensity of resources and the impact on the environment are constantly monitored and controlled on the projects and at our own operating sites. The data collections serve the group of companies as a basis for the continuous improvement of the environmental management system. Compliance with the company's own environmental and energy principles is regularly reviewed through internal audits and, if necessary, adjusted through targeted measures.

In order to prove the functionality of the environmental and energy management system, the company has had itself certified according to DIN EN ISO 14001 and DIN EN ISO 50001.

In all areas of our business activities, we are guided by the established principles of responsible corporate governance. For FRIEDRICH VORWERK, appropriate corporate governance means always acting responsibly with regard to all stakeholders: Shareholders, employees, business partners, society and the environment. It also provides the guidelines for the conduct of our executives and the management and supervisory bodies of FRIEDRICH VORWERK Group SE. The aim of our corporate governance structures is to promote responsible corporate management geared towards sustainable value creation. This approach forms the basis for the long-term success of the company and contributes to building long-term trust among all stakeholders of the company and the financial markets.

FRIEDRICH VORWERK is a European public limited company (SE) based in Germany and as such has a dual management and control structure consisting of an Executive Board and a Supervisory Board. The Executive Board is responsible for the actual management of the group of companies in terms of the agreed strategic direction. The Supervisory Board, on the other hand, assumes overall control and personnel authority over the Executive Board members. Both bodies work closely together for the benefit of the company. Furthermore, the general meeting, as an additional corporate body, is primarily responsible for fundamental decisions in accordance with the law.

In designing and implementing its corporate governance structures, FRIEDRICH VORWERK generally adheres to the recognised standards of the German Corporate Governance Code (GCGC). The Executive Board and Supervisory Board issue an annual declaration of compliance in which they individually explain and justify the implementation of the recommendations within the meaning of the GCGC. Further information on the responsibilities of the executive bodies and compliance with the GCGC can be found in the financial report.

To ensure integrity, FRIEDRICH VORWERK also has a comprehensive Compliance Management System (CMS). This system is designed to proactively prevent breaches of the applicable guidelines and standards, to identify individual misconduct at an early stage and to react promptly and in a targeted manner when it is discovered. The CMS of the FRIEDRICH VORWERK Group consists of several components, including a Group Compliance Officer and a Compliance Manager for each of our companies, a Code of Conduct, various guidelines, a whistleblower system and regular training courses as well as internal audits.

Through these comprehensive measures, FRIEDRICH VORWERK ensures that sustainable corporate governance and integrity are guaranteed and that all applicable standards are met.