Environmental award for Sulzer foundry in Finland

The Environmental Award of the Southeast Finland Regional Environment Centre is granted to companies, organizations or private individuals in Southeastern Finland who have worked in a positive way to improve the environment. The award criteria include an exemplary approach to the promotion of regional environmental protection and sustainable development. The first Environmental Award has been granted to Sulzer Pumps Finland Oy, Karhula Foundry.

In recent years, the Karhula Foundry of Sulzer Pumps Finland Oy has made considerable investment in environmental protection. Airborne emissions such as emissions of particles and heavy metals have been significantly reduced. Karhula Foundry achieved ISO 14001 environmental certification in the year 1998 and was the first foundry in Finland to do so. Karhula Foundry has also considerable reduced the consumption of raw water in recent years and investigations into further reductions will be launched shortly.

Karhula Foundry has participated in several research programs concerning the by-products of the foundry industry in order to reduce the volume of waste. One of the most important of these is studying the recycling and disposal of excess sand from foundries, carried out in co-operation with the Technical Research Centre VTT and the Technical University of Helsinki. This year over 3000 t of excess sand from Karhula Foundry was used as a raw material in a local cement plant.

The Karhula Foundry, located in Kotka, Finland, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, specializes in producing castings for process pumps and mixers. The cast materials are demanding high-alloy duplex and super duplex steel grades and some special alloyed cast irons. The annual production volume is more than 50,000 castings. Up to 80 per cent of the raw metallic material is obtained through recycling. The main customers are Sulzer Pumps’ segments Pulp and Paper (PPI), and Food, Metals and Fertilizers (FMF).