Leading from the front

Amare Ropes has announced a significant milestone in making its production more sustainable

When it comes to sustainability the marine industry may be lagging way behind sectors like automotive, but it is embracing change rapidly and getting its house in order. Naturally this includes product sourcing. All suppliers are very much aware that there is a commercial advantage throughout the OEM supply chain in making it easier for manufacturers to calculate the emissions of a product based on its sourcing, production and transportation. Armare Ropes, official rope supplier to Emirates Team New Zealand for the 37th America’s Cup, is leading from the front in establishing its sustainability credentials.

‘We are proud to announce an important company milestone,’ says CEO Stefano Finco, whose family founded the Italian company over 200 years ago. ‘Armare is the first company in the marine sector to have developed and issued Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for two of its ropes, the 10mm Star and 6mm Dyneforce 78 products.’

‘By issuing EPDs we want to demonstrate our commitment to reducing our environmental impact,’ Finco adds, ‘providing detailed information on various aspects such as resource use, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and waste production.

‘This leading initiative enhances the sustainability of Armare’s products and also responds to the growing demands for transparency and environmental responsibility from the market and consumers.’

Getting an EPD is quite a rigorous process. It lays out the environmental impact of a product across its entire cradle-to-grave life cycle. The first step to getting an EPD is to define the product category using Product Category Rules (PCR).

The PCR set out how a life cycle assessment (LCA) should be conducted, to quantify the energy and materials used in creating, transporting, using and disposing of a product. EPDs, which are all publicly available, are essentially transparency reports, allowing manufacturers to compare products based on their environmental impact.

Above: a fifteen-month sustainability project at Armare Ropes has enabled the company to issue EPDs for two of its key product lines

Armare has made that comparison easier still by working with external consultants Mapping LCA to develop its own environmental footprint calculator, available online using the QR code. ‘It’s a sophisticated, modern application that demonstrates publicly and scientifically the environmental sustainability of our products,’ says Finco. ‘It’s our commitment to establishing ourselves as a leader in terms of sustainability and circularity.

‘We have been working on this part of the sustainability project for about 15 months now, managed by our LCA expert and materials engineering graduate, Anna Laura la Monaca,’ he continues. ‘These are the first results and in the future there will be more interesting developments regarding different aspects of the production process, the supply chain, the packaging of our products and so on.

‘As a manufacturing company, we are aware that the impact of our choices is significant in terms of environmental impact. With this important first step, Armare is committed to spreading a culture of sustainability within the marine sector, promoting a true paradigm shift for a better future.’

Visit the Amare Ropes website where you can download the two EPDs and use the Environmental Footprint Calculator to check and compare different products. You can also access the Mapping LCA virtual area, a meeting point for sustainability experts looking for information and insights about sustainability in a 3D virtual environment.

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