Amazone is generating its own energy!

Saving the world by cutting the CO2 emissions that are destroying the climate is the hot topic on everyone’s lips – but we’ve been taking action for a long time already. Amazone is a pioneer when it comes to environmental protection, because AMAZONEN-WERKE produces a large portion of the energy it requires itself. And this is a long-standing tradition. More than 100 years ago, the machine tools in Gaste were directly driven by transmission shafts integrated in steam engines, which also covered the heat demand in winter. These steam engines were largely fired with waste wood from the company’s own production facilities. When waste wood was in poor supply during the 1960s because our agricultural machinery was, by that point, increasingly being exclusively made of sheet metal and steel profiles, the last system was finally dismantled.

It was a good 20 years later that the topic of independent energy generation became interesting again. When our paint system was changed to CTC (cathodic dip coating), Amazone purchased two combined heat and power plants in Gaste and Altmoorhausen that produce both electricity and heat. The electrical energy is used to power the machine tools, and the heat is used as process heat for the paint shop. This results in an efficiency level of more than 90% – which hardly any other power plant can come close to.

But that’s not all. We have been installing solar cells on the roofs of our plant in Leipzig for several years. The electricity generated in this way is used directly in our plant. We have been planning further solar installations on our sites in the meantime – the approval procedures are already underway. So you could say that actively practising environmental responsibility is a long-standing tradition at Amazone.