With an area of no less than 1,500 m², Kömmerling had by far the largest exhibition stand at Fensterbau Frontale. The company also thinks very big when it comes to sustainability. "At Kömmerling, circular entrepreneurship and innovation are paramount," says Henk Sprick, managing director of Kömmerling Nederland. "An example of this is our own recycling program. After we take back residual material from the processing of our profiles from our customers, this is processed together with end-of-life window frames into granulate and reused in new plastic profiles - in other words, the original product. In this way, the cycle is complete. By doing so, we reduce CO2 emissions by 90 percent compared to using virgin material and give products a new life time after time."
This far-reaching focus on circularity even led to a real world first in 2020: "That's when we were the first to succeed in developing a window frame made of 100 % recycled material, called Kömmerling ReFrame," says Henk. "Since then, this window frame has already been successfully used in many projects at home and abroad." However, circularity at Kömmerling is not only limited to the reuse of residual material in a new product. The company had a second first in 2023 with the introduction of window frames made of bio-attributed PVC. "In bio-attributed PVC, part of the raw material of the plastic material is replaced by a renewable alternative. In this case, it is residual biological material from sustainable forestry and agriculture. The result: fossil-free PVC."
Naturally, at all our production sites and in-house recycling facilities, we are also actively working on energy conservation through the use of residual heat, solar collectors, wind energy and the deployment of electric side loaders, among other things, in order to become less and less dependent on fossil fuels," says Henk. "Our goal is to eventually have our production become energy-neutral in the future."