The Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited (SAVWIPL) group, which has been in the country for close to two decades, is one of the leading automotive groups with significant manufacturing base and a comprehensive portfolio of brands and products. While for many sustainability is a mandate, at SAVWIPL it is a way of life serving as a keystone to their entire manufacturing processes. The group’s consistent efforts and steady progress in decarbonization, zero waste, water conservation, social responsibility, Biodiversity, and Compliance Resilience & Responsibility have helped them stay true to their brands core pillars.
Reduction in road fatalities
Safety has always been synonymous with the group. And in that direction, in collaboration with MSRDC and Save LIFE Foundation, SAVWIPL helped inducing a 54% reduction in road fatalities on the old Mumbai-Pune highway, as a part of Vision Zero Project. Tactical urbanism trials have also been initiated recently by redesigning a busy intersection at Karla Phata on the Old-Mumbai Pune Highway to bring down deaths due to fatal accidents. This was not only done to ease the dense traffic movement but also to offer a safer experience to pedestrians and cyclists. SAVWIPL has also undertaken the training of 1000 police personnel on basic trauma and life support to enhance emergency response preparedness.
Conservation of the environment
Conservation of the environment is the group’s way of nurturing nature and for that, SAVWIPL has been conducting tree plantation programs in Pune and Aurangabad. At its Aurangabad facility, the group has set up an oxygen park with over 25,000 densely planted trees and water conservation parks that contribute to their efforts towards achieving water positivity. The group also has watershed management projects in the dry zones in Pune that were Certified Net Water Positive by DQS India Pvt. Ltd. in 2021.
Watershed management
Further, Rs. 1.34 crore has been invested by the group in developing a watershed management project in Latur. There have been constant initiatives to restore over 100 hectares of degraded mangroves in Alibag.
Nurturing talent
The group is also taking steps to nurture talent with various skill development programmes that offer scholarships to engineering students, conducting mechatronic workshops for training the internal workforce as well as in-class students, and setting up mini science centres at municipal schools in Aurangabad.
Renewable sources of Energy
Škoda Auto Volkswagen India Private Limited group has also increased its dependence on renewable sources of energy with the setup of 980KW advanced solar power generation at its plant in Aurangabad. The group has also invested in solar panels that help generate 1475MWh of power annually, contributing a colossal reduction of 922 tons of CO2 emissions per year emitted during manufacturing at the plants.
During the advent of the most unfortunate pandemic that shook the foundations of the world, SAVWIPL was one of the frontrunners to utilize its facilities to develop, manufacture and distribute protective face shields, intubation boxes for surgical procedures, cost-effective version of the AMBU bag as a well as a filtered mask for surgeons.
Support to Sassoon Hospital in Pune
To facilitate the medical facilities, the group had pledged a support of Rs. 1 crore to set up 1,100 beds at the COVID19 facility in Sassoon Hospital in Pune. With an NGO tie-up, the group distributed 35,000 sanitiser bottles and 50,000 food packets in Mumbai, Pune, and Aurangabad. The workforce at SAVWIPL also doubled up as noble warriors by contributing their day’s salary amounting to Rs. 1.2 crore. This was used in the development of ventilators and PPEs for COVID-19 hospitals in Mumbai, Pune, and Aurangabad. The group has also supplied a mobile healthcare van to Karanjvihire Primary Healthcare Centre in Pune that comes equipped with facilities to transport patients requiring hospitalization as well as provide medical consultation to the neighboring villages.
Standing true to its mission of zero-wastage, the group’s state-of-the-art facilities in Pune and Aurangabad have been recognised as Zero Liquid Discharge sites and certified as ‘Zero Waste to Landfill’ sites by TUV Nord. This was achieved a year in advance of what was the internal target. Additionally, the group’s activities are well on track to achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2025 under its ‘GoToZero’ initiative.
