Corporate Social Responsibility

From its roots in Little Eaton, Derby in 1974, Liniar’s headquarters, mixing plant, lamination facility, warehouse and showroom are now based just a few miles away in Denby, Derbyshire. Sitting within the Amber Valley Region, Liniar has not only had a progressive apprenticeship programme and a strong local workforce for more than four decades, the company has also played an active role in helping the neighbouring communities of Marehay, Ripley, Heanor, Codnor and Belper.

The Amber Valley region was once home to the coal mining industry, but the community suffered from lengthy periods of unemployment levels following the closure of the area’s mines and the Denby Hall Colliery in 1968. Liniar’s facilities are situated on the very site of the old colliery, which was used for opencast mining for many years.

Community

A large proportion of Liniar’s focus is on finding ways to support its local community. This motivation has been a foundation of the company since its inception and continues to be fully supported by Liniar’s US parent company, Quanex Building Products – in fact, Liniar recently won the ‘Hometown Award’ for its work within the community, at the 2020 global Quanex Stakeholder Awards.

To help facilitate Liniar’s work within the community, it joined the prestigious Investors in Community platform in 2021. The platform is designed to connect businesses and individuals with charities and community initiatives in their local area. The system can track volunteering hours, help the team find activities to get involved with and provides a place for employees to sign up for or suggest fundraising opportunities that are close to their heart, offering ‘community credits’ for all activities undertaken by its members. The Investors in Community platform also provides charities with 100% of the donations collected through activities and is free for all good causes to join.

PPE Project

In March 2020, when lockdown was announced in the UK, Liniar’s doors had to temporarily close. With more than 90% of the workforce on furlough leave, the teams banded together to volunteer to help local front line and NHS workers during the national PPE shortage.

During the site’s six-week closure between March and May, the Liniar Design and Development team produced a 3D-printed headband-style visor, which when added to a simple acetate sheet, formed a protective face shield.

The Senior Management Team was fully supportive of the initiative, so the team worked round the clock to produce its first 3D-printed visors. Within a matter of days, Liniar’s parent company Quanex approved the expenditure for a £20,000 tool to allow the visors to be mass-produced. From there, Liniar team members and customers volunteered to help assemble, pack and deliver the visors to those who needed them most across the country.

To date, Liniar has donated more than 38,000 protective visors free of charge to key workers. You can see the latest number and learn more about an initiative that’s been close to the hearts of all within the Liniar team on our Liniar PPE page.

Further community support

While Liniar’s PPE project was an overwhelming success, it is just one of the projects the company and its teams have been involved in. Amongst many other initiatives, Liniar has participated in the following:

• Made financial donations of more than £5,000 to Age UK Derby & Derbyshire and Rainbows Children’s Hospice Financial donations to these small, non-national charities are on-going annually, whenever they need additional support.
• Built an outdoor stage at a nursery where one of the pupils sadly passed away. The stage was built using Liniar’s donated PVCu decking and fencing products and was installed by its decking team as a memorial to the student who passed.
• During the October 2020 half-term, the nation faced the prospect that underprivileged children would be going hungry without access to adequate meals they’d otherwise receive while they were in school. To help the local community’s children, Liniar worked with local public house The Bull’s Head to provide meals up to the value of £1,000.
• Liniar’s team organises a quarterly collection to help support local food banks and charities throughout the year – during the winter months, this includes collects coats, blankets and food for the homeless.
• In winter 2020 while the pandemic was still raging, Liniar took part in a ‘Matching Gifts’ initiative organised by parent company Quanex. It undertook a dried foods collection across the whole workforce on behalf of local charity Salcare, with the charity benefiting from 200 items and an £800 cheque.
• Before 2021’s Easter holidays, Liniar worked with Derbyshire WISH, a charity that runs a chain of domestic abuse shelters, to provide children who live in these shelters with Easter eggs. The team collected more than 325 eggs for these families.
• Provided Hi-Vis vests and protective gloves for a small group who clean litter off the road ways in the local area. The group turns glass bottles they collect into saleable items and has managed to raise more than £12,000 for Codnor Primary School.
• After working with Derbyshire WISH at Easter, Liniar has committed to supporting them more regularly – with the latest initiative involving collections of personal hygiene items and toys for the families sheltered there.
• Liniar has twice purchased 600 raffle tickets, one for each member of its team, to support Age UK Derby & Derbyshire – in November 2020 and again in April 2021.
• A Liniar team of cyclists took part in GM Fundraising’s 2021 initiative to support Hope House Children’s Hospices in an industry-wide challenge of cycling 100 miles in August 2021. The Liniar Senior Management Team has committed to Liniar matching the funds raised by the team.
• In an initiative submitted by a Liniar HGV driver, a local school’s outdoor play area has a decking area that is no longer safe for play. Liniar has committed to providing the materials for and replacing the decking area, with the help of its Outdoor team.
• Liniar will be supporting Rainbows Children’s Hospice again in December 2021 by sponsoring the local Derby Santa 5k Run.

Sustainability and the environment

The environment is close to the hearts of all who reside on this planet – especially as the effects of climate change continue to increase in severity. Liniar is dedicated to reducing its carbon footprint and ensuring it only has a positive impact on the environment.

The company has been a waste-neutral manufacturing facility since the launch of its outdoor ranges in 1999, which utilise recycled PVCu in their composition.

As part of Liniar’s sustainability focus, the company entered into a Climate Change Agreement with the Environment Agency in 2018 in a bid to help further reduce its carbon footprint, bringing it in line with the UK Government’s Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme.

With the implementation of an extensive Environmental Management Policy, Liniar received ISO 14001 accreditation that same year and was recertified again in 2021. As part of Liniar’s EA agreement a phased plan was formed to lower the company’s carbon emissions. Steps taken included:

• Replacement of incandescent bulbs across the site to LED bulbs, saving 140,624Kg in CO2
• Installation of heat pumps which do not require fossil fuels, saving approximately 35,156Kg in CO2
• Installation of new, energy efficient chillers, saving approximately 87,890Kg in CO2
• Metering and controls, providing flexibility throughout the site to manage heat more efficiently, saving approximately 175,580Kg in CO2
• Updating existing HGVs to Euro 6 engines and replacing diesel company cars with electric or hybrid models
• Continued water recycling of approximately 4billion litres per year in a specialist on-site, underground facility
• Employees issued with reusable water bottles, replacing paper cups
• Implementation of further recycling with an initiative to bring back PVCu offcuts from Liniar customers to be used to manufacture new, recycled products.

At the end of target period four of Liniar’s Climate Change Agreement, its facility achieved a cumulative Specific Energy Consumption (SEC) of 1,618.297 kWhp/tonne, compared to its target of 3,514.028 kWhp/tonne – putting Liniar ahead of its period four target by 53.95% and saving over 20,000 tonnes of carbon. This is something the entire Liniar team is incredibly proud of.

For more information, take a look at our Sustainability page.