We at Bals are reliable, down-to-earth people who are in close touch with nature. We know and love the regions where we are active and have our business locations. This is why we do everything to look after these unique natural environments and to preserve them for future generations. Below you will gain insights into our sustainability goals and activities in this area.

Responsibility for people and nature

As a family-owned company, we have actively pursued the concept of sustainability since our foundation in 1957. We are firmly committed to UN Agenda 2030 and its 17 sustainable development goals. We align our business activities, our products, our manufacturing and our corporate environment towards this agenda.

At Bals, all employees are conscious of the responsibility for people and nature. All business divisions – design and development, procurement or production, sales and marketing – have to meet the highest environmental standards. We are aware of this responsibility every single day.

Environmental awareness, responsibility and sustainability are integral components of the corporate culture at Bals. This is mirrored in our certification according to DIN EN ISO 14001, which was confirmed by the German technical inspection association TÜV NORD CERT GmbH in February 2023. All important activities concerned with active environmental management are included in this inspection and certification process. 

DIN EN ISO 14001:2015 is a globally recognised standard for environmental management systems. The standard consistently encourages aspects of corporate environmental protection. The successful certification of Bals confirms our sustainable actions and our commitment to meeting the concerns of environmental and climate protection.

Resource-friendly production

Production that saves as many resources as possible and the continual enhancement of our ecological efficiency at all levels are a matter of course for us. To this end, we have established our own environmental management system that deals with all relevant aspects. Furthermore, the responsible, resource-friendly use of raw materials as well as energy-optimised production are as natural to us as the utilization of all possibilities that recycling and reclamation systems provide. In the future too, our focus will be on goals such as ecological efficiency and the continued reduction in emissions.

For us, sustainability also means assuming responsibility as an employer. We keep jobs safe, encourage the development of every individual and are loyal to our sites which we care for and continually develop over the long term. We respect the personal dignity, privacy and personal rights of every individual, irrespective of the colour of their skin, their ethnicity, nationality, social background or disability they may have. We do not tolerate child labour, exploitation, forced labour or any kind of illegal employment.

Safe, modern working conditions

The very latest safety systems to ensure safe work, comprehensive precautionary measures and preventive healthcare are of key importance. Thinking about the future is also important to us: For this reason, we create qualified training positions in a wide variety of professional areas each year.

As far as renewable energies are concerned, Bals is actively committed at our site in Freiwalde: There we have installed a highly modern open-space solar park for sustainably environment-friendly electricity generation. The solar park comprises 2004 modules with a total output of 671.34 kWp and an impressive size of 10,000 square metres. 75 percent of the annual yield of approx. 700 MWh is used directly in our own production facilities – thereby reducing our annual carbon dioxide emissions by around 500 tonnes. In addition to this, we are taking many other steps to continuously optimise the CO₂ footprint of our company: These include the conversion of all areas to economical LED lighting systems, the use of energy-optimised machines and systems, the changeover to electric power for our fleet of vehicles, electric bikes for employees as well as many other measures.

Products for a sustainable world

When it comes to climate protection and sustainability, the electronics industry is leading the way with numerous innovations. Electromobility, energy efficiency, renewable energies – important future topics are unimaginable without our contribution. For years, Bals has been involved with products that support sustainable and environmentally sound economic activity.

Interesting fact: At the Hanover trade show in 1992, we presented one of the first charging stations for cars with electric drive – back then, the electric charging station was way ahead of its time. Since the 2000s, we have been focusing even more intensively on solutions for today's and tomorrow's electromobility. We are one of the leading manufacturers of system components for the infrastructure of charging systems. Our portfolio features over 100 products, including AC charging connectors for the regions IEC / EN (Europe), UL (America and Japan) and GB / T (China), pre-assembled charging cables, testing devices as well as charging sockets, with or without LED, in various dimensions. Numerous manufacturers of charging stations, power supply companies, public utilities and facility management companies use Bals eMobility components worldwide.

Our INNOLINQ is proof that good, tried-and-tested products can always be improved further, especially in terms of sustainability. This is the latest generation of industrial plugs and sockets, which has received the renowned iF Design Award. It is the first Bals plug and socket that does not contain any lead, and therefore already meets tomorrow's extremely high environmental standards. Thanks to a special manufacturing process, it has been possible to significantly optimise the working weight of the newly developed contacts and, therefore, the consumption of resources, while retaining the same degree of stability and conductivity.

With products such as BALS-CONNECT, we also enable energy consumption to be easily monitored in a wide variety of scenarios, savings potential to be recognised and thus consumption to be reduced permanently. The uncomplicated energy monitoring solution is suitable for many different application areas and therefore forms the basis for achieving lasting savings: from production facilities, the construction industry and surface mining to container terminals and the monitoring of refrigerated containers in port facilities, right through to traffic technology, the events sector and the reading out and monitoring of power distribution systems.