Flender Drives Sustainability Forward with New Logistics Hall at its Voerde Site

The new building is part of Flender's investments to be able to handle the expected growth in the global wind energy business and to drive the energy transition in Europe. In addition to large components for wind power gearboxes, the logistics hall also serves the industrial business of the global drive specialist.

The new hall is part of a logistics concept that includes the lease of another hall with around 10,000 square meters directly next to the Flender site and was developed according to the standards of sustainable manufacturing. Flender CEO Andreas Evertz: "With the new storage areas, we are making our logistics processes sustainable and thus reducing a considerable part of the previous transport routes and the associated CO₂ emissions. Components that were previously stored de-centrally can now be stored centrally and made available for assembly more quickly with optimized transport routes. The energy for the large parts washing machine comes from district heating. Having short material routes, the gearbox parts can be transported directly from the truck to the large gear unit assembly via a roofed airlock. This means that the hall does not cool down and we save valuable energy. In addition, we will equip the entire roof of the new hall with photovoltaic modules. With measures like these, we have already been able to reduce our CO₂ emissions by 79 percent in recent years and are getting closer step by step to our goal of operating on a completely CO₂-neutral basis."

Markus Ritte, Head of Flender Real Estate NRW, adds: "We are proud to have completed the construction project within twelve months, despite material bottlenecks and the current challenges in the supply chains. When selecting the collaborating companies, we deliberately opted for regional partners in order to drive sustainability forward here as well." In addition to storage areas, the new building, which is 200 meters long and 40 meters wide, is home to goods receiving, incoming goods inspection and a cleaning area with a large parts washing machine.

CEO Evertz: "The expansion of wind energy is a major challenge. Wind turbines, and with them the gearboxes and drive systems, are continuously growing in size and weight, and demand will increase massively in the coming years. Our new technologies and investments like this  expansion of our site in Voerde are also a sign thatwe are ready to drive the energy transition forward together with our partners.”