Testimonial from ORAC

Orac is leveraging the LCA Quadrant Tool of Enperas to expand and improve its sustainability efforts.

About ORAC  
Orac is the international standard for high quality 3D ornaments for interior decorations, innovating constantly in technology, materials, sustainability and design. Orac produces wall mouldings, 3D wall coverings, coving, skirting and other decorative elements for walls.

I am Miguel Knockaert, a 55-year-young man, married and a proud father of two daughters, a son, and a happy grandfather of my first granddaughter.

I am a chemical Engineer specialized in plastics and plastics processing. I began my career as a process engineer with a producer of PVC window and door profiles. After working in the window business for a few years, I moved to the UK plant and took on the role of plant manager. Shortly after that, I moved with my family to work in Germany as a technical director, still in the same type of business.

21 years ago, I decided to return to Belgium and joined Orac NV. I made the choice to join Orac mainly because I wanted to stay within the plastic converting sector, but also because I wanted to work with a different type of product in a different market. In fact, the choice to join Orac was made because I believed their story, the passion, …

Initially, I started up the extrusion department mainly focusing on technology development. I then became the plant manager, and finally, I was promoted to the position of COO. Two years ago, handed over the operational management of our different plants to another team member. This decision was mainly made in order to have more time to focus on technology and integrate new developments within our sustainability goals.

I believe that by integrating Ecodesign in plastics, plastics can be one of the solutions to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal. The new focus has given me lots of new energy. “I want to be an ambassador for what we believe in Orac is a contribution to a better planet”.

Today, we finished the LCA stage and conducted a thorough data validation. We are now ready to take the next steps and start the next phases.

Our products are not yet categorized as “building products,” so there are no official needs yet. However, we want to be prepared well in advance.

At least, we want to be able to calculate the full environmental impact of our product and communicate based on real facts and figures.

The main reasons to start with the LCA Quadrant Tool were/are:

• Gain insights on the impact of each product (group).
• Simulate so we can review our R&D roadmap where necessary.
• Benchmark with other products within our market.
• Support our CSRD reporting.
• Generate improvement plans.
• Avoid greenwashing.
  

03: What impact do you believe our LCA Quadrant Tool will bring to your R&D and Ecodesign projects?

We have only just begun the “roll-out” at this moment. Despite this, we have already cultivated an “internal hunger” to learn more details about the impact within different impact categories and, from the Ecodesign perspective, to understand more about the packaging and end-of-life scenarios while also trying to combine our actions with these insights and the new legislation.

• At least we now know the larger blocks to focus on.
• We have also learned that some previous points of focus have a much lower impact than expected, so we may remove them from the priority action list.
• We have started to combine chapters A1 till A3 and D, as the combination of them truly reflects the impact of the choice of raw materials.
• These combined insights will certainly result in defining new actions.

Enperas analyzed our case and delved deeper into the situation in our main markets and the markets on which we will focus more in the near future.

Based on that analysis, a proposal was made, taking into account the balance between ease of implementation and the cost involved.

We still need to align with our commercial teams, but most likely we will start with the IBU and the INIES programs.

I would assess the overall expertise as very good. We stuck more or less to the expected timeframe, and help/advice is readily available when needed.

I have known Luc Plancke (CEO and founder of Enperas) for quite a long time. I followed him and his activities from a distance, and I knew more or less what he was doing with Enperas & the LCA Quadrant Tool.

Since Luc new pretty well what Orac was doing, we were convinced that what he would propose would be a fit, and would meet the biggest part of our expectations.

After the kick-off, we met further Enperas key team members Santa and Arthur. Both of them proved to be very helpful experts in their focus area’s.

In the last weeks, Luc & Santa fine-tuned a couple of minor things that popped up during the data validation phase. After these adaptions, we think we are ready to take the next steps.

3R - RECYCLE, REUSE, and REIMAGINE

Orac has now embraced a new concept of sustainability through the incorporation of the 3R's - Recycling, Reusing, and Reimagining in their exquisite range of Wall decorations.

Orac has set up numerous recycling streams within their production processes, ensuring that circular materials are utilized to their fullest potential.

Renewable Energy - Solar Parks into Orac’s operations

In addition, Orac has started bringing its carbon footprint down and has installed 2 big solar parks in both of its production plants in Belgium and Slovakia. A whopping 5.752 solar panels in total.

This technology not only reduces their dependency on traditional sources of energy but promotes maximum usage of renewable energy.

Installing EV loading stations

Moreover, Orac has taken a step further towards a greener future by installing EV loading stations within their premises, surrounded by a lush green environment and silo's circular materials in the backdrop.

A beautiful sight that symbolizes their commitment to environmental conservation.

"At Orac we want to be ahead in all aspects concerning sustainability. We have focused quite hard in recent years on reducing our carbon footprint and increasing our circularity.

The time has come to gather all the data and the improvement in a system that will form the foundation for reporting, communication and improvements plans for our business.

With the Quadrant LCA tool we believe we have found a match. And with Enperas we have found a competent partner to guide us towards making a bigger contribution to a better planet".

Do you want to use Enperas’s Life Cycle Assessment Quadrant Tool & prepare Environmental Product Declarations for your Building Materials and/or Chemicals?
We are happy to hear from you! Contact us today ⤵️