Welcome to the colourful STABILO country

For this week's CG Live Talk we moved the video shoot to STABILO's colourful Cube building, which is packed full of creativity and inspiration. STABILO is the brand that appears on the outside market, but it belongs to the Schwan STABILO Group. This has three divisions: firstly, writing instruments, which many of you are probably familiar with, and then cosmetic products and the outdoor area. We visited the section  where the highlighter, which you probably know as a text marker, is produced.  The STABILO Boss pen, which everyone knows, will namely turn 50 next year. "The pen for reading, not writing" is used extensively everywhere. Of these 110 million are produced - in both the pastel and highlighter segments! This means that every three seconds a box of 10 highlighters is sold and goes into the country's offices. And rightly so, because such a STABILO highlighter has a service life for more than 7 years. The reason for this is the use of premium materials and ink of excellent quality. The ink neither discolours when exposed to light nor can it leak out of the pen, because STABILO has taken great care to develop a test to check the pen's sealing. 

When it comes to quality management, the company attaches great importance to checking the quality of its processes. "In other words, every machine is equipped in such a way that from the beginning to the end it actually monitors every stage of assembly and production," says Harry Saffer. The subject of automation has also taken a big step forward at STABILO, especially in the packaging area. What previously had to be done by a large number of employees in laborious manual work is now done by a single machine. 

In spite of these massive production figures, sustainability is also a major concern at STABILO. The entire plant runs on green electricity, and the waste heat generated in the production is in turn used to heat the offices. Great care is taken to ensure that very little, if anything, is wasted here. All employees are committed to sustainability and motivated to make the pens more environmentally friendly and use less electricity and resources. The STABILO Boss pen is recycled to a level of 83% - but why not 100%? The answer is quite simple: as a rule, what is classed as recycling should proven. In production a number of plastic or injection-moulded parts, currently up to 150 tonnes, regranulated and integrated into the product process once more. This can't be proven externally, which is why this element is not mentioned. 

In terms of plastics, too, attention has to be paid to high recycling quality. The suppliers of plastics need to be aware of the fact that the purchasing department is always applying greater demands on plastic quality. For the STABILO GREEN BOSS, for example, the caps of Coca-Cola bottles are used. On the one hand these are food-compatible and on the other they are of a very high quality. As a result, high production speeds can be guaranteed.

For the future, STABILO has decided to become CO2 neutral - a path the company has deliberately aims to take. The goal is to be genuinely carbon neutral by 2025, in other words by its own efforts and without buying additional certificates.