Sustainable development goals
Our initiatives primarily support four of the UN Sustainable Development Goals:
At Capra Robotics we are committed to operating our business responsibly.
We want to help protect our climate and environment, and positively influence our employees, partners, and society while running a financially strong robotics business.
In 2023, we have worked systematically to understand the societal challenges that are significant to our business. We have assessed and mapped the sustainability topics and selected the challenges that we consider to be the most material for both our customers, employees and for us as a business.
In our sustainability strategy, we have chosen to prioritize three focus areas. For each focus area, we have selected 3-4 initiatives which we specifically will focus on.
Our focus areas are:
Responsible robots
Capra Robotics provide multifunctional, autonomous robot platforms for inspection, logistics, and maintenance.
We see our robot platform as a contributor to positive change in the world. Our mobile robot platform can help automate a range of manual tasks, ranging from property and employee surveillance, last-mile parcel delivery, and cargo logistic. Central to our robot platforms is our vision to create mobile robots to help people eliminate physically demanding tasks and increase efficiency.
Product safety
Product safety is fundamental to Capra Robotics both in our development process and in our customer collaborations. Our robots are equipped with anti-collision feature protecting humans and objects in the proximity of the robot. In addition, our robots are equipped with intuitively recognizable intention markers making is clear to humans what the robot next move is. We have a strict focus on the correct and safe use of our robot platforms.
In general, we experience a high level of customer satisfaction. To work systematically with customer evaluation, we will develop a system, where we can collect customer experience feedback, integrating these insights into our development process.
Sustainable materials
At Capra Robotics, the main materials used in our products are aluminium, steel, and plastic. These materials are optimal as they are highly durable and can tolerate harsh weather conditions.
Within material use we are focusing our efforts on the following four areas:
- Reduction of the use of materials and packaging
- Increase of recycled materials where possible
- Transition to certified anti-deforestation fibre-based materials and optimize the use of renewable sources
- Asses the risk of conflict minerals and materials
Responsible procurement
We collaborate with local, Danish, and European suppliers where possible. Only a few materials are purchased from non-European countries. As a part of our procurement process and risk assessment today, we visit suppliers to evaluate working conditions and quality.
To further progress in this area, we will develop a supplier management system, starting with the drafting of an Ethical Supplier Code of Conduct. Our aim is to engage all our suppliers to sign the Supplier Code of Conduct. We will measure the share of suppliers who have engaged and signed our Supplier Code of Conduct.
We expect that the main part of our suppliers will sign the Supplier Code of Conduct. For the remaining, we will prioritize to introduce our supplier expectations and help our suppliers.
Sustainable operations
As an innovative robotics company, we have administration, development, production, and storage facilities in the city of Aarhus in Denmark.
waste
At our location, we sort waste according to current regulations, and reuse and recycle whenever possible.
We want to transition from a linear model of take-make-waste to a circular model that can help safeguard the world’s finite resources and eliminate waste. Therefore, we will prioritize to focus on material efficiency in our innovation process and focus on reuse, upgrading customers’ robots, and extending the product life.
Going forward, we will assess the possibility of incorporating “design for disassembly”, which involves products’ ability to be separated into components to help the recyclability of each individual part of the product. Additionally, we will assess the possibility of a take-back system for our robots and explore the possibility of developing a business model around leasing our robots.
energy
We focus on energy optimization of our operations by reducing our energy use at our facilities. We will assess the possibility of switching our operations to run entirely on green energy. Until then, we will monitor the share of our use of sustainable energy and set concrete improvement targets for the coming years.
We focus on our transportation and will evaluate how we can reduce our CO2-emissions. We will assess, among other things, route planning to reduce the number of kilometres driven and evaluate how our fleet can transition to electric, hydrogen, or HVO vehicles.
climate
To gain an overview of our direct and indirect climate impact we have calculated our direct CO2 emissions (scope 1) and indirect CO2 emissions (scope 2). With this fundamental knowledge, we will identify reduction targets and reduction activities to reduce our CO2-emissions.
We have identified our value chain CO2 emissions (scope 3) for several of our product categories and we will keep investigating the possibilities of obtaining LCA documentation (Life Cycle Assessment), for our robot platforms.
With an LCA we can document the climate impact of our robot platforms throughout the value chain. Our goal is being able to document LCA for our products, providing transparency of the climate footprint of our robots to our customers.
Good workplace
At Capra Robotics an attractive workplace is naturally linked to a workplace where employees thrive, are given the possibilities to develop, and where they are continuously supported to lead a healthier life.
We increase our focus on the responsible workplace through three areas of action: Employee H&S, Employee development and Good governance.
employee health & safety
Workplace safety and employee health are essential at Capra Robotics. We want our employees to be able to be and feel safe. We will help each other creating and living a culture that supports and protects a safe, secure, and healthy working environment for all.
We have two dedicated work environment representatives (AMR) and a safety committee representing both employees and management.
To ensure the well-being of our employees, we each year conduct employee development conversations (MUS) with all employees and carry out a workplace evaluation (APV). From these initiatives we systematically collect insights and learn how we can continuously improve our working environment, protecting our employees, and continuously ensuring a high employee satisfaction.
employee development
Our employees can receive training and education through relevant courses, as we are an industry that deeply depends on state-of-the-art knowledge and innovation capabilities. We collaborate with several organizations and digital innovation clusters throughout Europe to keep developing our employees’ competences and to get best in class knowledge within our industry.
On gender diversity, we are a situated in a male-dominated industry, however, we want to increase the gender diversity to ensure equal access for all and to increase our ability for creative thinking and innovation. We want to attract more women to our company and to the technical skills of the robotics industry, which is why we also choose to participate in projects such as “Girls in Robotics.”
We encourage students to apply for internships at Capra Robotics, as we wish to help them test and improve their competencies and share the newest knowledge from their education. We have had close collaboration with several interns and students from, among others, SDU (University of Southern Denmark) and DTU (Technical University of Denmark), who have made their master’s thesis with Capra Robotics.
good governance
In Capra Robotics we have formed an internal sustainability management group that concentrates on sustainability. The sustainability management group is to secure continuous development and facilitate the needed resources so that we can keep reducing our negative impact on society and instead increase the positive impact on both society and company.
Our robots are all equipped with cameras, therefore data security and GDPR are of particular importance to us. We comply with all GDPR regulations. In addition, we comply with fair competition laws, sustainability in marketing, and rules for tax payment.
We have also developed an employee handbook which gives insight into our company culture and values, work environment, policies, safety measures, and on IPR (Intellectual Property Rights).
We participate in several memberships and partnerships. We are a member of the Danish Industrial Robot Association and Robotics Foundation, and we collaborate with several universities on courses and specific projects to keep up to date with best practices within robotics and sustainability.