ALL THE SUSTAINABILITY PROGRAMME ACTION POINTS

In over 40 years, Molto Luce has grown from a retailer into a manufacturer of successful luminaires – with a company that now operates successfully in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy emerging from the initial idea. Our production is 70% in-house, with the major share of the value chain being in Austria, securing 420 jobs in Austria and 480 throughout Europe.

Nevertheless, just like the entire electrical and electronic industry, we also source components from all over the world. Having said this, we ensure that labour standards are complied with and first-class quality is assured through our local employees. 

At Molto Luce, we translate the principles of environment, social and governance into our People.Power.Planet. sustainability programme. We address the three pillars of sustainability and actively support our team, our economic strength and our planet.

Each of these pillars includes a number of objectives and principles which we intend to achieve step by step through our action plan with a variety of measures. 

ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) reporting may be a buzzword, but for us it’s more than that. We see it as an opportunity to seriously address our responsibilities towards the environment, society and stakeholders. For this reason, we have invested in two innovative software tools: firstly, to calculate our LCA analyses internally and secondly to collect our ESG data efficiently and analyse it too.

The LCA tool is the basis for our future environmental product declarations, while the ESG software is the basis for the sustainability report. The tools show us where our levers are to reduce carbon emissions and to shift our focus to how we can establish effective sustainable measures in our processes. 

Two years ago, when we established the sustainability department at Molto Luce, we were unaware of the speed at which customer requirements on this subject were increasing. Almost every tender today requires information on carbon footprint, recycling percentage, repairability and return options. 

These growing expectations have led us to invest more in developing sustainable solutions.

Our employees come from all corners of the world and speak an impressive variety of languages – often more than us “locals”. And in fact, they often get along better with each other, which is incredibly enriching in our everyday work. Whether it’s communicating with a supplier’s lorry driver at the goods entrance or scheduling deliveries of our luminaires to faraway countries – their skills make us strong. 

We try to discover our employees’ latent potential so that our company can grow economically and above all with a clear focus on people. Internal career pathways are committed to each time, are exciting and never too entrenched! 

We launched the “Firmenradl” bike campaign at Molto in 2024. In a short time, more than 20 employees had already made use of this campaign and leased a bike.

The advantage of this programme is that it offers leasing, so the employer acts as the lessee and the lease payments are deducted tax-free from the gross salary. Both factors are of interest to employees from a tax point of view.

Our goal is to maintain or improve our employees’ mental and physical health. We aim to create working conditions that enable our employees to build resilience and awareness and to maintain them in the long term through training courses on health-related topics and a supportive working environment.

Our holistic approach focuses on involving our employees from the outset, so that we can create tailored measures.

In a world that is increasingly focused on sustainability, we are constantly looking for energy-efficient solutions. Our research helps us develop products that are not only high-performing but also environmentally friendly. For the first time, matrix technology allows us to direct light only where it is really needed, thus reducing unnecessary energy consumption. 

Our research enables us to take advantage of the latest technological advances and integrate them into our products, thus setting trends in the lighting industry. 

Our effective supplier management is supported by a local employee. For example, we work closely with our suppliers and conduct regular inspections and training to ensure that suppliers meet our requirements.

As a result, we can ensure products of the highest quality and at the same time promote fair and safe working conditions. 

Our excellent X-Change technology provides the solution for an easily replaceable chip-on-board LED module to ensure maximum flexibility. Should defects occur, if a change in the light colour is desired or if a considerable improvement in energy efficiency can be achieved due to technological advances: we swap the bulb without having to replace the entire luminaire. This extends the service life and reduces unnecessary costs and resources.

Huge cost savings can be achieved by switching to an energy-efficient and low-maintenance lighting system. It can even be worth converting older LEDs to modern LED lighting systems. Modern lighting systems require considerably fewer luminaires for the same light output and have a longer service life compared to outdated systems.

By integrating intelligent sensor technology, you can also sustainably reduce your carbon emissions.

In our Planet pillar, we have defined three main objectives: to conserve resources, save energy and reduce impacts on the climate. To take these principles into account in our product development process right from the start, we have introduced an internal scorecard.

We use roughly 90 criteria to assess to what extent our products are already meeting the set targets or, if they are not already, how we can achieve this in the future. We developed the Molto Ecodesign Guideline for this purpose. 

Most carbon emissions from a luminaire, namely 90%, occur during its useful life. This is also the phase where we can deliver the greatest cost savings to our customers. Even switching to LED lighting can significantly reduce energy consumption, and the integration of sensor solutions such as daylight and presence controls can reduce energy consumption by up to 90%.

We have already started a number of projects and are proud of our references.

Waste separation is standard and goes without saying nowadays. Nevertheless, rigorous analysis is required to continually check the efficiency and identify any weaknesses. It is equally important to raise awareness for the importance of waste separation. 

These efforts not only enable us to save costs, but also to return valuable resources effectively to the recycling process.

Life cycle analyses look at a product’s entire value chain, from design and production, to packaging and transportation, and finally the use phase and end of the product life cycle. We analyse our products using appropriate LCA software, following the standards for life cycle impact assessment, EN15804+A2 and PSR-0014, to obtain standardised environmental product declarations (EPDs).

We develop this model in-house, as this is the only way we can identify our levers and opportunities to reduce carbon emissions and other impact indicators such as material consumption. 

The installation of a photovoltaic system is a typical project that offers both economic and environmental benefits. All the available roof areas at our production site in Weißkirchen are now fitted with solar panels.

These panels now generate one third of the electricity required for our production in Weißkirchen. Due to the success of our panels in Weißkirchen, we will be covering our head office in Wels with photovoltaic modules in summer 2024. 

Given the trend towards decarbonising the transport sector and the increasing need to regulate emissions, electric vehicles are a long-term solution that can help companies prepare for future requirements.

This is because electric vehicles do not produce direct emissions during operation, especially if the electricity comes from renewable energy sources.

Retrofit solutions offer the advantage of retrofitting existing luminaires cost-effectively and easily with energy-efficient, durable and environmentally friendly light sources. The basis for this is our interchangeable light source, which can be replaced by anyone and is available in the lengths 600, 900, 1200 and 1500 mm in accordance with the T5 versions. There are different light colours from 2700 K to 4000 K and options for CRI 80 and CRI 90.

The product is available with dark raster, basic raster, PMMA opal cover and microprisma, and offers various beam angles. The housing is also available in different colours. Since the new light source is dimmable, it allows for additional energy savings. When combined with a Molto Luce luminaire, a motion swarm sensor is also available.