New paths to competitive advantage
An industry has moved forward
In recent years, the Danish printing industry has been systematically undertaking environmental work. For several years the industry was far ahead of the customers, but now the customers have taken up the challenge, and some have begun to impose new requirements.
Finn Westergaard is both joint-owner of Danapak WP and Chairman of Graphic Association Denmark. He describes development in the printing industry as follows:
"I do not think that there is any clear answer as to why the industry has developed in the way it has. It has been a multi-stage rocket. It began with Graphic Association Denmark and the Danish Union of Graphical Workers getting together around 1990. There were problems with the working environment for the staff working with cleaning solvents. We solved these, whereafter many enterprises expanded work on working environment problems and then started on environmental problems."
Initial disappointment
Finn Westergaard's own enterprise is both a printers and a packaging manufacturer. In the mid 1990s, the enterprise investigated which factors customers accorded highest priority. To their great surprise, environmental performance topped the list. Instead of applying for quality certification, the enterprise therefore decided to apply for environmental certification.
"The customers said that they accorded great importance to environmental performance. The printing industry took this to heart and we rushed to keep up. Now we are extremely glad we did, even though the customers initially turned out not to be interested after all. This disappointed us a lot. But then the pharmaceutical companies started to show interest in the idea. Today it is a necessity to have environmental certifi cation or the Nordic Swan ecolabel," says Finn Westergaard.
In 2002, around 800 Danish enterprises had a certified environmental management system - either ISO 14001 or EMAS registration. Source: Danish EPA. |
Over the years a number of enterprises in the printing industry have received support for
environmental work from the Danish EPA.
Danapak WP, packaging and printing enterprise in Greve, 50 employees.
