Thanks to the holistic and above all financial perspective offered by the Tanso software, Linhardt will in future be able to combine four CO₂ reduction measures to cut not only up to 45% of total emissions, but also achieve significant savings in material and CO₂ pricing costs — helping to at least partially offset rising procurement and production costs. This argument convinced the executive board to prioritize the jointly developed decarbonization strategy at its annual workshop.

About Linhardt

Linhardt is a family-owned packaging manufacturer with more than 80 years of history and three production sites in Germany. The company develops and manufactures high-quality aluminum packaging — including tubes, aerosol cans, and aluminum bottles — for customers in the Healthcare, Beauty, and Home segments. Linhardt supplies international brands such as Haleon, L'Oréal, and Nestlé.

Initial situation

Even before partnering with Tanso, Linhardt had already built a solid sustainability strategy. The transformation concept published in 2024, along with recommendations from an energy consultant, included numerous measures at the Scope 1 and Scope 2 level — among them photovoltaic systems on factory roofs, heat pumps, energy efficiency projects, and the switch to green electricity. In parallel, Linhardt reported through the CDP and operated an established ISO 50001 energy management system. Strategic targets were also already anchored in the 2023 sustainability report: the use of primary aluminum from renewable energy sources (Green Virgin) and the gradual increase in the share of post-consumer recycled aluminum (PCR).

What was still missing, however, was a robust, complete data basis across all emission scopes — particularly Scope 3. Without this foundation, the actual emission drivers could neither be identified nor could effective reduction measures be derived. As a result, the existing strategy remained limited — and the contribution to a potential SBTi-aligned reduction path could not be reliably assessed.

Challenges

The central challenge for Linhardt was to make actual emission sources transparent and to manage them in a targeted way.

• Targets without an underlying action plan: The 2023 sustainability report anchored the strategic goal of increasing the share of PCR and Green Virgin aluminum to a defined target value by 2030 - without concrete measures being defined or internal implementation processes having been initiated.
• Material-specific restrictions in the shift to aluminum: Manganese-containing alloys cause tooling issues, pharmaceutical tubes are subject to strict purity requirements that limit how much the PCR share can be increased, and low-carbon primary aluminum (e.g., from Mozambique) is not reliably available.
• Lack of internal systematics: Wall-thickness optimizations were implemented on a project basis for one customer but were not systematically reported to sustainability management. CO₂ effects were neither quantifiable nor reportable.
• Limited leverage in the supply chain: Linhardt sources aluminum from a small number of suppliers, some of which are regulatorily mandated. Shifting volumes is therefore largely not an option as a lever. Decarbonization instead requires cooperative approaches at the supplier level.
• Growing regulatory and customer pressure: Upcoming SBTi target-setting, ongoing CDP reporting, and increasing requirements from major customers are raising the pressure to act across the entire supply chain.

Why Tanso

Linhardt was looking for a central system that makes emissions measurable, models measures in a quantifiable way, visualizes them graphically, and tracks progress transparently.

"What convinced us was the realization that decarbonization and economic management go hand in hand. The targets we had set ourselves remained hard to grasp for a long time. With Tanso, we were able for the first time to quantify which measures have which CO₂ leverage, what they cost us, and what the ROI will be."

August Wanninger

Vice President Sustainability & Innovation at Linhardt

CCF development and hotspot analysis

Using Tanso, the complete Corporate Carbon Footprint for 2024, including all Scope 3 categories, was structured according to the GHG Protocol and mapped within the platform.

The analysis revealed a structural problem: while the measures planned so far effectively addressed Scope 1 and 2, with a projected reduction of up to 30%, across the entire balance boundary, the reduction potential amounted to only around 8.6% by 2030 and 6.2% by 2045, compared to the scenario without further measures, including growth rates.

The integrated hotspot analysis made visible for the first time where the central lever lies: aluminum accounted for around 58% of the total CCF in 2024, making it by far the most significant emission driver. For Linhardt to reliably steer toward a net-zero path by 2045, this is exactly where action is needed, since the PCR share stood at just 19% in 2024. This already enabled savings of 12% of total emissions. However, concrete operational measures to further increase the PCR share were still missing.

Reduction module for Scope 1, 2, and 3

In the Tanso reduction module, the existing Scope 1 and Scope 2 measures from the 2024 transformation concept and the energy consultant were entered along with realistic growth assumptions, and their actual overall impact was assessed. The result confirmed that the measures taken so far are not sufficient. In addition, the prioritized Scope 3 measures were modeled with CO₂ levers, cost assumptions, and ambition levels, and visualized as scenarios for the SBTi reduction path. Short- and medium-term investments (capex and opex) were also incorporated.

Expert and industry knowledge

In a structured decarbonization workshop with Linhardt's procurement, production, sales, and sustainability management teams, Tanso facilitated the joint prioritization of measures based on reduction potential and feasibility. Tanso contributed deep industry knowledge on aluminum emission factors, PCR price premiums, Green Virgin availability, and mass balance approaches. The result was a collectively agreed set of measures supported across departments.

Results

Linhardt's strategic sustainability goals were defined at a higher level but proved difficult to manage operationally. Through the Tanso platform, they were broken down into concrete measures that directly contribute to the target values anchored in 2023.

Quantified reduction potential and cost savings

Four primary measures could reduce Scope 3 emissions by up to 45% by 2030 - relative to the total CCF, this corresponds to a reduction of up to 52,000 tCO₂e. Thanks to the holistic and, above all, financial perspective offered by the Tanso software, Linhardt will in future be able to combine the four CO₂ reduction measures to cut not only up to 45% of total emissions, but also achieve significant savings in material and CO₂ pricing costs. This argument convinced the executive board to prioritize the jointly developed decarbonization strategy at its annual workshop.

"The targets we had set ourselves remained hard to grasp for a long time. With Tanso, we were able to break them down into concrete, quantified measures — and, for the first time, understand whether we were on an SBTi-compliant path or not."

August Wanninger

Vice President Sustainability & Innovation at Linhardt

Outlook

Based on the insights gained, Linhardt is now working together with Tanso on the targeted and structured implementation of the identified measures:

• Deepening the decarbonization strategy in an internal executive board workshop, sustainability is being further anchored as a strategic topic at board level
• Gradual expansion of PCR and Green Virgin quotas, starting with product groups without regulatory hurdles
• Development of SBTi-compliant reduction targets based on the modeled Tanso scenarios
• Ongoing progress tracking of the prioritized measures in the Tanso reduction module

Beyond the original project, Linhardt also uses Tanso to automate Product Carbon Footprints (PCF) and to prepare for CSRD reporting obligations. The platform is thus a permanent management tool within sustainability management, uniting CO₂ data, measure planning, and progress reporting in a single system.