Four more major vehicle refinishes businesses, Pennings, Alton Cars, Veetec and Impact are joining AkzoNobel’s Sustainable Repair Network, a program launched last year to help customers in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region become more sustainable and efficient.
All new businesses to the Network have achieved a Level 1 Certification, demonstrating their ongoing commitment to reducing their respective carbon footprints.
Over the last few months, the four businesses have partnered with AkzoNobel’s team of experts in the UK to generate insights about their energy consumption and emissions using the AkzoNobel’s proprietary Carbon Pulse application. This information has since been evaluated along with production data, including vehicle throughput and repair statistics, so that they can define their key performance indicators (KPIs).
AkzoNobel is now working with each of them to develop strategies for future improvements across their collision repair centers. These improvements typically include changes in equipment, processes, and choice of products, which in turn results in reduced waste, energy usage, and cost, and increased efficiencies.
Alton Cars, which operates a body shop group with 17 repair centers, Pennings, which has three sites, Veetec with five sites and Impact which has four collision repair centers all join The Vella Group, which became an official partner of the network in March of this year.
Paul James, Strategic Accounts Manager Vehicle Refinishes UK & Ireland, AkzoNobel, is pleased with the progress being made to support its customers with a key challenge facing the repair sector.
“Ultimately, we are working towards finding areas where these businesses can reduce energy consumption and the associated emissions,” he says, “and identifying other key levers to reduce their impact on the environment and advance towards a more sustainable future,” said James. “We now have five of the UK’s leading accident repair groups, which collectively have more than 30 repair centres across the UK, working with us and where we know we can make a difference.”
“This is just the start for us,” James continues. “Our Sustainable Repair Network is open to all repair businesses looking for support on their sustainability journey, who can benefit from the knowledge and experience of sustainability experts and our growing portfolio of products and services to make a long-term difference to the operations and their business.”