Austrian remanufacturer celebrates business milestone with event attended by employees and representatives.
Embatex AG, which is a major employer in the Feldkirchen region of Austria, announced that it celebrated its 20th anniversary in July, with around 130 employees and representatives from offices in Germany, the Netherlands and Slovenia gathering in Feldkirchen to look back on the company’s development over recent years and discuss new future challenges.
CEO of the company, Christian Wernhart used the anniversary event to honour the company’s “most exemplary and innovative” employees with “Emstars” awards, with six members of staff honoured for their many years of company loyalty after being with the company since it was founded. This means that one third of the founding staff are still working for Embatex.
Founded in 1993 by Wernhart, the company currently has 220 employees, recycling 700,000 toner cartridges and 900,000 ink cartridges each year. Around 73 percent of its products are exported, and Embatex claims to be one of the top five recyclers in Europe, with Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, UK, Slovenia, Spain and Scandinavia being its main markets.
Over the years, Embatex has won numerous awards, including three TRIGOS awards in 2007, 2008 and 2009 under the “Society”, “Ecology” and “Workplace” categories; as well as an award for “family-friendly company” in Carinthia in the category of large companies. The company was also among 28 nominees to be recognised in this year’s TRIGOS award in recognition of its sustainable business model, resource saving software EMPS and social programmes for children and youth.
The Recycler reported that Embatex has also this year won an Italian sustainability award for its work in innovative ways of remaining within guidelines of environmental sustainability, in particular its work with the “procurement cycle, resource conservation, energy efficiency and waste cycle”.
In terms of certifications gained by Embatex across its 20 year history, the company is EMAS, ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 certified; with many products awarded with an environmental label such as Blue Angel (Blauer Engel), LGA tested for harmful substances, Austrian Ecolabel and Nordic Swan.
Embatex also does work for charity, and this year celebrated 10 years of its “recycling4smile” scheme with the “Red Nose Clown Doctors” organisation, which has seen the company donate over €500,000 ($669,655) in total by collecting used cartridges.