ENVIRONMENT

HELLENIC CABLES developed a three-bottom line activity in order to use materials with environmentally friendly properties for manufacturing products:

• Reduce (efficient use of raw and supporting materials).
• Reuse (reuse materials and packaging).
• Recycle (recycle as much as possible).

The Company attempts to make coordinated efforts in order to use efficiently renewable and not renewable raw and secondary materials for manufacturing and distributing its products. Reuse of metals (aluminium and copper) is a characteristic example. These metals constitute the raw materials for cable manufacture. By remelting aluminium and copper scrap the need for raw materials procurement is reduced.

The Company reuses pallets, drums (wood packaging for inserting cables for safe transportation) and reels (plastic packaging for enamelled wires), reclaiming them from the customers (after using the cable), thus leading to significant savings of timber and reuse of plastic. Our Company ensures the efficient use of water supplies restricting consumption to the minimum feasible level. Especially, in the company’s production plant in Corinthia, where the production processes require increased water consumption, we constantly use and reuse sea water as a cooling mean. In 2013 52.067 m3 of water were reused in Cable and Aluminium Rod Manufacture Units and 333,433 m3, of water in Copper Rod Manufacture Unit.

During cable manufacture residues remain at our plants, usually in the form of small solid cable clippings which are next segregated in basic materials and returned in recycling industries. PE is recycled, while the remaining part is made available to appropriately licensed waste managers that collaborate with the Company.