Corporate Carbon Footprint for Dierig Holding AG
Customer: Dierig Holding AG
Category: Textile Industry / Real Estate
Date: Sept. 2024
Dierig, founded in 1805, was once the largest cotton spinner and weaver in continental Europe. In the mid-1990s, the subsidiaries of the listed Dierig Holding AG relocated their production abroad and, thanks to this strategy, have remained one of the leading German market players for high-quality home textiles. With the relocation of production, the company began the professional management of its group real estate. The real estate assets amount to 482,000 square meters of land, covered by 147,000 square meters of buildings.
This transformation required not only an adaptation to new market dynamics, but also a diversified approach to sustainability. In order to meet the increasingly complex requirements of sustainability regulation, the company was looking for an experienced partner to assess its carbon footprint. Dierig Holding AG found this partnership in DFGE – Institute for Energy, Ecology and Economy.
Julia Singer
Sustainability Manager at Dierig Holding AG
“Choosing DFGE as a partner was an easy decision for us. Their extensive expertise in the field of Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF), their technical competence and their many years of experience coupled with their good reputation make them a very valuable partner in carbon footprinting.”
As part of this partnership, the second Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) has already been created in order to precisely record and further optimize the CO2 footprint of Dierig Holding AG. The particular challenge in the company is diversification, as the company operates in very different areas and sectors (textiles and real estate), which cause many emissions in terms of carbon footprint in very different areas along the value chain. The potential for reducing the carbon footprint varies accordingly.
Challenges
Complexity of data integration in a diversified company
Dierig Holding AG was faced with the challenging task of ensuring consistent and high-quality data collection from its eight subsidiaries. These subsidiaries operate in different sectors – textiles and real estate. The partially varying data availability and data quality made the standardization and consolidation of the data a complex challenge.
While the textile sector already had established procedures in place, the real estate sector was not as advanced in the development of data collection processes. The need to harmonize these differences and at the same time meet the increased expectations of stakeholders for precise and transparent sustainability data represented an additional hurdle.
Solution
Efficient process optimization and harmonization through close cooperation
In order to successfully meet these challenges, Dierig Holding AG relied on close cooperation with DFGE. DFGE contributed its expertise and experience to optimize data collection and processing. A central element of the solution was the joint development of more efficient processes for data collection, which took into account the different requirements of the subsidiaries and created a standardized database.
Another important step was the adaptation of the SAP systems to enable more efficient and precise data queries across the subsidiaries. These adjustments led to a significant improvement in data quality and considerably accelerated the CCF process. What originally took around six months was significantly shortened thanks to the optimized processes and the early involvement of the subsidiaries. The close cooperation between Dierig Holding AG and DFGE made a decisive contribution to increasing efficiency and successfully implementing the survey of the company’s carbon footprint.
Result
Successful calculation of the Corporate Carbon Footprint and continuous improvement
So far, two Corporate Carbon Footprints have been successfully created for Dierig Holding AG and the third is in progress. With the imminent entry into force of the CSRD obligation, the focus in future will be even more on compliance with legal requirements and the continuous optimization of the CCF.
Ellen Dinges-Dierig
Board member of Dierig Holding AG
“The cooperation with DFGE was characterized by professionalism and trust right from the start. Their support was crucial for the introduction and continuous improvement of our carbon footprint. We look forward to continuing our collaboration and are convinced that we will master future challenges together.”
