Promoting sustainable development involves taking care of the sufficiency of natural resources, the environment and the well-being of people. It shows in all our operations, bringing sustainable competitiveness for both us and our customers.
Chemigate provides its customers with products originating from nature. Starch-based products, such as binding agents and coatings for the paper industry, are an ecologically sustainable option for replacing oil-based raw materials.
Common areas of responsibility in the chemical industry include the sustainable use of natural resources, safety of production and products, occupational well-being and transparent communications to interest groups. Companies in the field systematically work to promote responsibility by taking part in the Responsible Care programme.
Responsible functionality
Chemigate bears responsibility for its production chain by taking sustainable operations and production safety into account right from the product development stage.
In the paper and board industry, Chemigate’s modified starch-based products have several positive environmental impacts. The carbon footprint of bio-based polymers is much smaller than that of synthetic polymers.
Chemigate’s starch-based water treatment products replace synthetic flocculants and inorganic coagulants in wastewater and sludge treatment.
At the wet end, cationic starches efficiently adhere to anionic fibres, thereby significantly reducing the wastewater loads and energy consumption of paper machines. The process is boosted and raw material efficiency improved by liquid cationic, anionic and amphoteric fixatives, runnability and strength polymers. In coating, starch is also increasingly replacing synthetic chemical products.
Purely Finnish and responsibly international
The starch production chain is a good example of the chemical industry’s circular economy and bioeconomy, where the processes are efficient in terms of materials and friendly to the environment.
Chemigate’s modern dry modification plant in Lapua enables modified starch production with a significantly lower energy consumption and wastewater volume than the wet modification process.
What comes to Chemigate’s main raw materials, native barley and potato starches are sourced directly from domestic partners. Indeed, they are clearly among the best on the market in terms of purity and responsibility. Thousands of Finnish farmers are employed in growing barley and starch potatoes. Native wheat starch is purchased from several different sources, all of them responsible European suppliers.
Before making a native starch sourcing decision, Chemigate goes through its responsible operating model together with the supplier. If something needs to be improved, we will do this together. This is always the case, regardless of whether we are dealing with Finnish barley or Thai tapioca.
Towards a more responsible future
Responsibility is part of modern business, and reporting obligations have increased in large corporations in particular. Many companies are reporting environmental, human rights, human resources and interest group issues relevant to their operations as well as their ethical practices.
Chemigate’s operations and products meet all the demands regarding, for example:
- Responsible and sustainable sourcing of raw materials
- Supplier codes of conduct
- Product safety
- REACH
- Compliance with various food contact and other regulations
- Nordic Ecolabel, EU Ecolabel, Blue Angel
- Allergens, heavy metals, pesticides, Kosher, GMO, SVHC, CMR