February 2022

Attila Chikán Jr. re-elected as BCSDH president

Budapest, February 22, 2022 – The Electing General Assembly of the Business Council for Sustainable Development in Hungary (BCSDH) has elected a Board for another three-year term. During the six-year presidency of Attila Chikán Jr., 50 new companies joined the organization, which now brings together 115 companies producing 30% of Hungary’s GDP and has become a benchmark in the field of sustainability. The re-elected President will be supported by a four-member board, whose re-elected members are Zsolt Jamniczky, Vice-president of E.ON Hungária, Dr. Ágnes Fábián, Managing Director of Henkel Hungary, Zoltán Gazsi, Managing Director of Eisberg Hungary, and Gréta Nagy, Managing Director of Dandelion Ltd. The management of BCSDH will remain in the hands of Irén Márta.

The re-elected Members of the Supervisory Board are Orsolya Pallaghy, Dr. Orsolya Fazekas, and János Kocsányi, CEO of Graphisoft Park SE. The mandate of the President, the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board is for three years.

‘I believe that the organization is on the right path and our business is becoming more effective each and every year’ – started the evaluation of the last three years by Attila Chikán Jr., President of BCSDH – ‘The awareness and recognition of the organization both to governmental stakeholders and to a wider audience has grown significantly in recent years due to our professional activities and their successful communication’.

Nothing proves the success of BCSDH’s efforts to introduce more and more companies to the essence and content of sustainable development than the fact that the association now has 115 members. In recent years, the 340 professional events, 220 active corporate leaders, 250 talented young people in the ‘Future Leaders’ program, more than 280 civil, scientific and corporate experts involved in the Action 2020 Hungary Program, and 140 business practices presented so far that provide real answers to sustainability challenges demonstrate the BCSDH’s commitment to sustainability.

Last year, the Circular Economy Platform, which was set up at the initiative of the BCSDH, the Dutch Embassy and the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, already had 94 members. The initiative aims to foster the circular transition through collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Further, for the sixth time this year, the For a Sustainable Future Award, launched in 2017, recognizes outstanding corporate, managerial and personal achievements in the field of sustainability, complemented by the Social Responsibility category launched in response to the pandemic.

One of the greatest achievements of recent years has been the establishment of the Net Zero Advisory Board, established in January 2021, which brings together key players committed to cross-sectoral regulatory, scientific and business sustainability. The primary goal of this cooperation is to facilitate and accelerate the process by which the Hungarian economy can become carbon neutral by 2050.

‘As for the future, we want to continue and develop all these activities with the usual determination in the coming years. We have a number of tasks ahead of us and we need to continue developing the action and programs that are planned by 2030’ – Attila Chikán Jr. highlighted as the most important tasks. – ‘It’s time to turn words and commitments into action. We must strive to further strengthen the leadership of the BCSDH as the voice of a responsible and active business community. We will continue to support our member companies in achieving their scientifically based, ambitious sustainability goals. Working with them, our shared goal is to deliver measurable results by the end of 2030 through our recently launched Time to Transform 2030 program’ – added the re-elected president about his professional program.

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The new leadership of the Business Council for Sustainable Development in Hungary

Attila Chikán Jr. – President
CEO
ALTEO Plc.

Mr. Chikán has a degree in economics and more than a decade of professional and leadership experience in the field of energy. The ALTEO Group, led by Mr. Chikán since its establishment, has become one of the sector’s most important actors. The company’s core businesses are smart energy management services for industrial firms and renewable energy production. ALTEO has issued stocks on the Budapest Stock Exchange since 2010 and was recently listed in the Prime Equities category. The company is one of the leading domestic representatives of an impact investment strategy aimed at making profitable, sustainable and socially responsible investment.

Chikán Attila Jr. is committed to the principles of sustainability: he runs his own blog under the name Chikansplanet. He is also actively participating in BCSDH’s professional work and has served as the president of BCSDH since 2016.

Dr. Ágnes Fábián
CEO
Henkel Magyarország Kft.
Adhesives Technologies business unit executive

A member of Henkel Magyarország Kft’s team since 1996, Dr. Ágnes Fábián became a business unit executive at Henkel Adhesive Technologies by moving up through the company hierarchy and spending nine years in an international environment, besides which she has also been CEO of Henkel Magyarország since 2011. Dr. Fábián began her career in 1990 in Biogal Gyógyszergyár Hélia’s cosmetics sales division. Later, she worked as regional sales manager at Maybeline’s and Loctite Magyarország when Henkel acquired the company. Her aim is to make even more leaders realize that sustainability and value creation for customers are inevitably components of good performance. Operating sustainably is now a requirement that cannot and should not evaded.

Zoltán Gazsi
Managing Director
Eisberg Hungary Kft.

Managing Director of Eisberg since 2007. After graduating from the University of Agricultural Sciences in Gödöllő, Zoltán worked for the National Institute for Agricultural Quality Control, followed by 14 years of working in a multinational environment at Syngenta. After leading the Experimental Station at Ócsa, he had various marketing- and project-coordinator jobs in increasingly large fields of operation, including on almost all continents. He believes that the good examples seen at companies have an impact on the families of employees and on the direct and indirect environment of the company, and that these impacts are inevitably the start of significant changes at the level of society.

Zsolt Jamniczky
Vice-President,
E.ON Hungária Zrt.

E.ON Hungária Group’s Director for Central Affairs since 2007 and Deputy CEO of the company since 2010. After completing his studies, Mr. Jamniczky served as an adviser in the Foreign Relations Office of the Hungarian National Assembly. In 1996 he was appointed Director for Corporate Affairs at Reemtsma Hungary, a Debrecen-based tobacco company. This was followed by the Director for Corporate Affairs position at Philip Morris Hungary until 2005, while between 2006 and 2007 Mr. Jamniczky was Philip Morris International’s Director of EU Government Relations at the company’s Brussels office. He studied at the Budapest University of Economics and the Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences. Mr. Jamniczky’s main fields of interest include corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility in a constantly changing economic and social environment, and innovation in the energy sector.

Zsolt Jamniczky was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the President of Hungary in 2016.

Gréta Nagy
Managing Director
DANDELION Kft.

Founder and Managing Director of Dandelion Kft. since 2006.

Gréta graduated as an environmental engineer from the Széchenyi István University, and also from an Environmental Management Engineering and Economic Analyst MBA at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

She has participated in environmental and process-optimization projects over the last twelve years, and her colleagues have developed innovations such as the methodology for calculating a company’s ecological footprint, as well as the Greenlex software, which is a self-assessment software for regulatory compliance. The company’s latest development is WorksStressMeter, which may be used to measure the stress level of employees and organizations. Gréta has been participating in BCSDH’s work as a consultant.

22.02.2022

Our newest member is Spreadmonitor Kft.

Member News

Our newest member is Spreadmonitor Kft. founded in 2014, represented by Iljicsov András, with HUF over 130 million sales revenue with 5 employees for 2020. The software development company, which specializes in complex and data-intensive IT problems, delivers IT and data science solutions primarily to the energy sector.

The goal of Spreadmonitor Kft. is to stand out and become a leader among the regional software development companies in terms of sustainability, setting an example to follow and serving as a model for other companies. The company’s environmental responsibility includes reducing their carbon emissions; by purchasing 100 tonnes of Verified Carbon Unit Retirement, they have neutralized 400% of the CO2 they emit by 2018.

In addition, the company strives to use only digital signatures and e-invoicing with all its partners, and they are paying careful attention to selective waste collection. In the name of social responsibility, in 2020 the Juszt-is-teszünk Foundation in 2021 the Jamba Hungary Foundation supported the company with an amount of almost half a million HUF. The goal of Spreadmonitor Kft. is to stand out and become a leader among the regional software development companies in terms of sustainability, setting an example to follow and serving as a model for other companies. They are responsible for their responsible and ethical operations through their annual survey, which is supplemented by a monthly survey and a biennial survey to discuss any problems and current issues facing employees.

Spreadmonitor Kft. is committed to increasing social responsibility and moving towards sustainable development. From their membership, they primarily expect to be able to share knowledge, learn best practices and think together to ensure that sustainability goals are institutionalized within the company.

22.02.2022

Our newest member is SolServices Kft.

Member News

Our newest member is SolServices Kft. Founded in 2017, represented by Gábor Farkas Dr. with HUF over 730 million sales revenue with 19 employees for 2020.

The company contributes to the achievement of the carbon-neutral energy objectives of Hungary and the European Union by developing high-performance large-scale solar parks. In the last few years, SolServices has developed and permitted a total of more than 700 megawatts of photovoltaic solar power plants in Hungary, becoming the largest player in the sector. The company’s first own solar park with the capacity of almost 140 MWs will be completed by the end of 2022. Lumen Park Szolnok will be one of the largest solar parks in the country, designed and built in line with the environmentally friendly principles.

SolServices Kft. works on the dissemination of energy production based on renewable energy sources, keeping in mind the criteria of sustainability and the development objectives of the future’s modern Hungarian energy industry. In addition to its core business, the company considers it important to take an active role in environmental responsibility, primarily through its educational and research activities.

The core business of the company is extremely important for sustainability, but they also pay attention to the fact that the principles of sustainability are considered not only in the goal, but also in every step of the way to it. It is considered important to share the professional experience gained so far, which is why the company’s first professional compass document was created to support the development and operation of environmentally friendly solar parks.

In 2020, the company prepared and implemented its Environment and Social Policy Statement within the organization, which always sets out not only the commitment to the principles of sustainability, but also the voluntary commitments to respect fundamental human rights and values.

The purpose of their membership is, among other things, to find opportunities for professional cooperation, to share and collect good practices, to build relationships with like-minded partners, as well as to share research results and professional experience.

21.02.2022

Let’s change the perspective! – HBLF 2022 Women’s Day Campaign – with support of BCSDH

News

On behalf of the board of HBLF we invite the CEOs of the businesses in Hungary to join the special HBLF International Women’s Day initiative for 2022. We plan to demonstrate alliance and call for action to raise awareness about the topic of female representation in leadership.

Today, only 8% of the top 50 companies (with the highest turnover) in Hungary have female CEOs. In line with the HBLF’s mission, we believe that by working together, we will be stronger and have a greater impact on the necessary changes and give women the opportunity in leadership. Participants are invited to a F2F, outdoor event with 100 CEOs on the 4th March between 7am and 10 am.

REGISTRATION

To shift things around we need to change perspective. We create an interactive installation that shows number 8, but by joint efforts it turns into an infinite sign. The transformation happens when enough participants make a special gesture. That’s why it’s so important to have as many leaders as possible to support the initiative with personal participation. Together, we can show that women also have endless opportunities.

We also invite the CEOs to share their commitment and with this input they can join this initiative, even if they are not available on the 4th March event. The campaign is planned to be displayed online and offline, as well as on social media, with the support of our media partners. The participating CEOs and their commitment is available on HBLF’s website. Hungarian Business Leaders Forum – HBLF Nőnapi kampány

We kindly ask participants to contribute to the cost of the campaign by paying a registration fee. Details are in the registration form.

With our partnership package (attached), we provide valuable opportunity & space for partner organization to appear in the campaign. Please let us know, if you are interested in this.

Please e-mail the photo and company logo to HBLF Secretariat. Eniko Csík is available in case of questions. hblf@hblf.hu Tel: +36305944876

Many thanks for joining this campaign and supporting the cause!

Best regards,

21.02.2022

Legrand is celebrating 30 years in Hungary

Member News

This year, Legrand is celebrating its 30th anniversary in Hungary. We are looking back a bit at the past this year, but we are also heading towards the future.

Our company, Legrand Hungary, which grew up on the foundations of the former Kontavill, not only successfully integrated from a state-owned company into an international group of companies, but has also become an equal partner of the other subsidiaries, and we have even opened new doors.

The tremendous growth rates of recent years have justified us, and it also played a role in our success that, if necessary, besides our strengths we took on our weaknesses as well.

The world is constantly changing, always at a different pace. If we only look at the last three decades in Hungary, we can remember three situations rewriting everything, which fundamentally shaped the business and economic environment and presented our company with completely new challenges: regime change, the 2008 economic crisis and the Covid pandemic.

However, we believe that if a company was able to or is about to emerge stronger from all three, it is worth paying attention to what it does and how it does it. Legrand Hungary is exactly like this.In recent years, we have managed to blend tradition and innovation and stand in the race for both the graces of consumers and within the group.

We develop based on customer feedback, so we can turn dreams and needs into truly workable solutions.The most common topics in the media are innovations by global tech companies and startups. Anyone who listens to this will see that the future will belong to smart solutions, in our case to smart homes. However, this does not only mean that the devices we offer (switches, controllers, cameras, etc.) must be remotely controllable; we must pay attention to environmental awareness, energy savings and practicality, and to offer our customers user-friendly solutions at affordable prices and, of course, to preserve the Earth for future generations.E-mobility is playing an increasingly important role, with the spread of which various Green’UP ™ vehicle charging solutions have also appeared in Legrand’s offer. All premium chargers are equipped with Bluetooth communication by default, which provides the transfer of charging information and the ability to control charging through a mobile phone application, offering users a simple and fast solution.

In addition to switches and sockets, this is how Legrand Hungary can be present in almost every area of life with excellent solutions and products. Our slogan continues to be ‘Legrand, improving lives’, and we do that to make the lives of our customers and clients easier and better.

17.02.2022

Provident Financial Ltd. has been a player in the lending market in Hungary for 20 years

Member News

With two thousand and three hundred employees, it is one of the largest employers in the country, currently serving two hundred and thirty thousand customers. For two decades, the company has been committed to providing economic and financial education to its customers and to supporting local communities through a wide range of social causes, which is why in 2008 it launched the Családi Kasszasikerek Programme, which provides Hungarian families with modern financial education and develops households’ self-care skills. Since its launch, Provident has implemented 50 successful educational programmes, which have helped 30 000 families and 300 social workers, cultural workers and educators to improve their financial literacy.

Understanding and managing our finances is an essential part of our daily lives. In order to be able to make responsible decisions in everyday life and in circumstances that require serious reflection, it is important to be aware of our financial situation and to monitor our income and expenditure.

For this purpose, Provident has produced a Family Budgeting Booklet 2022 to help with planning finances throughout the year. This booklet will be delivered personally by the company’s advisers to around 50,000 families in March to help them use it. The aim of the initiative is to ensure that by the end of 2022, as many families as possible will be able to show savings so that an unexpected expense does not put them in a difficult situation. The company believes that it can contribute to the development of financial awareness and planning among Hungarian families through such real, socially impactful programmes.

16.02.2022

Cinematic experiences – bird protection and sustainability

Member News

As part of its series of sustainability programmes for employees, MAVIR has made several short films having been made available to the general public. We have captured a variety of themes and special moments on our video sharing channel, drawing attention to the fragility of nature’s balance and, consequently, the importance of sustainable operation. Among the topics, we reported on the crane migration in Hortobágy, the Wild Goose Festival of Tata, while the footages shot at the veterinary station of the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden, our partner in the rescue and rehabilitation of birds, as well as our activities in the LIFE Danube Free Sky Project – installing bird diverter assemblies over the Danube with the help of drones and the study of bird mortality along transmission lines with a tracking dog – were also included.

Action for the protection of migrating birds with the help of drone technology and tracking dogs

After the ones at Gönyű, Győr, Ercsi and Szigetcsép, another section of the transmission line became bird-friendly: almost 600 bird diverters help the safe migration of birds at the Danube crossing in Százhalombatta. Work over the rivers requires a unique solution, for which we use drones, and, because of the complexity of the task, two drones perform the task parallely: one watching the transmission line and navigating the other that is picking up and installing the bird diverter assembly. This requires the coordinated and precise work of two pilots. In order to plan protection against collision, ornithologists also studied the mortality of birds under the transmission line sections to be found in the Fertő-Hanság and Danube-Ipoly National Parks with the help of tracking dogs. Activities of the LIFE Danube Free Sky Project, encompassing seven Danube countries (Austria, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary), aim to make transmission lines over the rivers visible, with the next step of making the section of the just mentioned transmission line across the Little Danube visible for birds.

16.02.2022

Another major forest planting commitment by MagNet Bank

Member News

MagNet Bank has committed to planting an additional 10,000 saplings in 2022 to enhance its impact on carbon neutralization and forest planting.
The second phase of the Bank’s commitment – made in the spring of 2019 – was successfully completed in November 2021. According to the 1 customer = 1 tree commitment, it has pledged to plant 40,000 trees in two phases between 2019 and 2021, in line with the volume of its total customer base. The 40,000 saplings were planted in the Pusztai Tölgyesek forest area in Nagykőrös and in the Ócsai Landscape Protection Area of the Duna – Ipoly National Park, with the help of the Erdőmentők (Forest Rescue) Foundation. At the end of the first two-year phase, the Foundation certified the initiative’s measurable positive impact on carbon neutralisation. The Bank hopes that more and more players in the banking sector will commit to planting not only trees on behalf of their new customers, but the planting volume will be based on their current customer base.

16.02.2022

Red mud recovery

Member News

Red mud is a large-scale hazardous waste that, due to its metal content, is of great value, so its complex recovery is an increasingly urgent issue worldwide.

In the framework of the project GINOP-2.2.1-15-2017-00106: „Extraction of rare earth elements and secondary raw materials production in the framework of the complex utilization of red mud” led by Martin Metals Ltd, through several years of work in our research institute, we have developed a laboratory-scale technology that has been able to extract and separate the most important (in terms of value) components with high efficiency.

The technology consists of easy-to-implement and scalable steps using accessible and inexpensive chemicals. We placed great emphasis on the recyclability of the chemicals we used, while also maximizing efficiency.

The recovered and separated components can be integrated into the production processes of different raw materials (Al-, Fe-, Ti-production) with little effort, and we obtained approximately one hundred times the enrichment of the most important micro-constituent (scandium) compared to the starting red mud.

15.02.2022

Enhanced for Sustainable Top Performance: The New CrossContact Extreme E from Continental

Member News

Continental to exclusively supply all-electric Extreme E racing series with tires again in 2022
Reliable performance for all climate zones and all terrain conditions
Latest technology for greater sustainability: One-third of second-generation tire for Extreme E already consist of recycled and renewable raw materials

Hanover, February 14, 2022. Continental has developed a new high-performance tire for the second season of the all-electric Extreme E racing series, which starts with the Desert X Prix in Neom, Saudi Arabia, on February 19 and 20. When developing the new model, the tire engineers and materials experts at Continental have not only improved performance, but also placed particular emphasis on a high proportion of sustainable materials. Continental has therefore completely redesigned the tread compound and the carcass of the second-generation CrossContact Extreme E on the basis of sustainable materials. Overall, the new CrossContact Extreme E is made from around one-third recycled and renewable raw materials. Silica obtained from the ashes of rice husks, a waste product from agriculture, has for example been used.

ContiRe.Tex Technology Used in Continental Tires for the First Time

In addition to reprocessed steel and carbon black, Continental is also using polyester yarn made from recycled PET bottles in the tire carcass for the first time. Thanks to the use of plastic bottles, conventional polyester has been fully substituted in the CrossContact Extreme E. The polyester in the carcass, which represents the load-bearing frame of a tire, is produced by one of Continental’s cooperation partners from old PET bottles that will no longer be reused, without any intermediate chemical steps, employing ContiRe.Tex technology. Each of the 30 tires that Continental is supplying to all ten Extreme E teams now contains recycled polyester made from around 60 reprocessed PET bottles. The technology will be integrated into the volume production of various Continental premium tires later this year.

Sandra Roslan, who supports the Extreme E racing series at Continental is confident that the tire developers’ efforts will also have an effect on the future of conventional tires: “With Extreme E, we test our latest technologies and developments under particularly extreme and unique conditions. The results will help us in the introduction of sustainable solutions for our volume production.

The second-generation CrossContact Extreme E tire will be used in all five races of the 2022 season and is optimized for maximum performance in all climate zones and terrain conditions. “With the wealth of new knowledge gained during the first season, we have been able to enhance the next generation of CrossContact Extreme E and have placed an even greater focus on the use of sustainable and recyclable materials,” says Nels von Schnakenburg, technical manager for Extreme E at Continental. The size, diameter and width of the tire, however, remain unchanged. These are 37 X 12.5 R17 – i.e. 37-inch diameter, 12.5-inch width, and 17-inch rim.

The technology company is a founding partner and exclusive tire supplier of the off-road racing series, which was first held in 2021. It brings motorsports with electrically powered vehicles to the remotest corners of the world to raise awareness of climate change among motor racing fans. The second Extreme E season starts in Saudi Arabia on February 19 and 20. In Europe, the all-electric racing series will be covered by various TV companies and broadcasters.

Continental is pursuing the ambitious goal of becoming the most advanced tire company in terms of ecological and social responsibility by 2030. By 2050 at the latest, the company intends to use 100-percent sustainably produced materials in its tire products and achieve complete carbon neutrality along the entire value chain.

Continental develops pioneering technologies and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and their goods. Founded in 1871, the technology company offers safe, efficient, intelligent and affordable solutions for vehicles, machines, traffic and transportation. In 2020, Continental generated sales of €37.7 billion and currently employs more than 192,000 people in 58 countries and markets. On October 8, 2021, the company celebrated its 150th anniversary.

The Tires group sector has 24 production and development locations worldwide. Continental is one of the leading tire manufacturers with more than 56,000 employees and posted sales of €10.2 billion in 2020 in this group sector. Continental ranks among the technology leaders in tire production and offers a broad product range for passenger cars, commercial and special-purpose vehicles as well as two-wheelers. Through continuous investment in research and development, Continental makes a major contribution to safe, cost effective and ecologically efficient mobility. The portfolio of the tire business includes services for the tire trade and fleet applications, as well as digital management systems for tires. Your contact: First name, last name, phone: international

14.02.2022