HARTING Technology Group: Connecting innovation to a smarter, greener future
Accelerating progress toward a circular business model
By prioritizing human and global environmental factors, HARTING Technology Group pledges to become carbon neutral by 2030. The SAP Sustainability Footprint Management solution enables CO2 emissions calculations for 13,000 materials, while the SAP Responsible Design and Production solution helps drive a sustainable and compliant packaging process.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| High tech | Espelkamp, Germany | 6,200 employees |
product carbon footprint calculations enabled.
emissions-free goal targeted for 2030.
recycled packaging material used.
Global Environmental Manager, HARTING Technology Group
Aligning family ideals with sustainability goals
As a family-run business, HARTING Technology Group shapes the future from the inside out. Environmental and climate protection are deeply rooted in its culture and actively promoted at every level. This inclusive approach fuels true innovation and exceptional solutions.
Considered the connectivity gold standard, HARTING delivers lifeline solutions—data, signals, and power—for mission-critical applications across many industrial sectors, including transportation, electromobility, renewable energy generation, automation, and mechanical engineering. With its inherent scope, the company required reliable methods to calculate carbon emissions across thousands of production materials, manage complex packaging data from thousands of suppliers, and meet the expectations of its customers and regulators. Spain’s plastic packaging tax—and similar regulations emerging across Europe—added to the urgency for automated regulatory reporting, requiring HARTING to reduce errors, avoid penalties, and stay compliant.
With a long history of sustainability achievements, HARTING wanted solutions that could build on its existing SAP ERP application landscape while maintaining its green production and renewable energy processes.
Member of the Board and Partner, HARTING Technology Group
Advancing sustainability on a foundation of innovation
Environmental protection and social responsibility are embedded in HARTING’s DNA and guide decisions at every level of the business. To build on this foundation, the company needed a sustainability approach that reflected its values and provided practical tools to measure carbon emissions, reduce virgin plastic use, and comply with tightening regulations. At the same time, all these objectives had to be met while preserving its established green production practices.
Spain’s new plastic packaging tax, which requires companies to report and pay fees on their use of nonrecyclable plastics, accelerated HARTING’s search for a more comprehensive sustainability solution. Preparing for similar requirements in other European countries, including the United Kingdom, reinforced the need to centralize packaging data, improve accuracy, and automate reporting to reduce compliance risks.
A shared vision and presence in HARTING’s core business advanced the selection of SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, part of the SAP Sustainability portfolio. The solution helps automate data collection, scale emissions calculations, create CO₂ transparency across its supply chain, and deliver granular, verifiable insights.
As its sustainability strategy matured, HARTING faced increasing challenges in packaging compliance and waste. It turned to the SAP Responsible Design and Production solution to consolidate packaging data from 15,000 external suppliers into one system, replacing error-prone spreadsheets with automated processes.
These achievements were made possible through close collaboration with SAP Services and Support, which guided HARTING through best-practice implementations of both solutions. SAP experts helped ensure fast adoption, smooth integration, and technical readiness at scale.
To accelerate deployment, HARTING used the quick-start service for SAP Sustainability Footprint Management to set a strong technical and functional foundation. SAP consultants also encouraged HARTING’s feedback throughout the rollout, using its input to enhance future capabilities and consider emerging feature requests.
For SAP Responsible Design and Production, the team of SAP experts helped build the initial data foundation and trained users on tasks for managing packaging data, extended producer responsibility obligations, and packaging scenario analysis. It also provided prebuilt content that sped up integration with the company’s existing SAP ERP application by automatically extracting and transferring relevant data from ERP tables into the solution.
Member of the Board and Partner, HARTING Technology Group
Accelerating sustainability goals with one-click carbon tracking
With SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, HARTING can calculate, analyze, and report product carbon footprints (PCFs) with accuracy and confidence. The solution delivers real-time, granular data that supports the company’s environmentally sustainable “GreenLine” label—a designation that highlights the use of biopolymers, or renewable materials, that reduce CO2 emissions by up to 70%.
“The key to communicating our CO2 emissions transparently and recognizing potential for reduction lies in the automated calculation and granularity of the data provided by SAP Sustainability Footprint Management,” explains Stephan Middelkamp, general manager for quality and technology at HARTING.
These insights allow HARTING to identify emissions hot spots and make targeted design and sourcing decisions. Additionally, the company is better equipped to help ensure accurate reporting for upcoming regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Digital Product Passport.
In parallel, SAP Responsible Design and Production is helping HARTING transform its approach to packaging. The solution provides the data foundation and analysis capabilities needed to monitor and analyze material compositions, track extended producer responsibility fees and plastic taxes, and redesign packaging to increase the use of recycled content. In addition, it enables compliance with Spain’s plastic packaging tax and readiness for similar European regulations by centralizing supplier data, automating calculations, and filing accurate reports.
Together, the two solutions provide HARTING with the visibility and intelligence to link emissions data with design decisions, accelerating its progress toward a circular business model. The company has increased the share of recycled plastic in its packaging from 0% to 80%, reduced the time spent on compliance activities by 30%, and enhanced confidence in data accuracy by 80%. These gains have reduced regulatory risk and operational costs while strengthening the company’s reputation as a sustainability leader.
Senior Packaging Manager, HARTING Technology Group
Targeting a carbon-neutral tomorrow
HARTING continues to look beyond immediate results and ask, “What long-term impact will our actions have?” This mindset drives the company’s commitment to achieve carbon neutrality across all sites by 2030. Building on its success with SAP Sustainability Footprint Management and SAP Responsible Design and Production, HARTING is charting the next phase of its sustainability journey.
The company will expand SAP Responsible Design and Production to facilities in the United Kingdom and Hungary. HARTING’s compliance playbook for Spain’s plastic packaging tax regulations will help these facilities centralize supplier data, automate calculations, and submit accurate filings to meet their local packaging and plastic tax requirements.
Beyond packaging, HARTING is evaluating expansion into additional domains, including key raw materials such as polymers and metals. The goal is to trace recycled content across product families, model extended producer responsibility cost impacts, and guide design choices that further improve circularity.
Building on this progress, HARTING is accelerating its transition toward low-carbon production. Measuring the carbon footprint at the facility level establishes product category rules for everyone to follow. Shared supply chain data improves purchasing processes and product development.
Linking data-driven insights with sustainable design decisions will help HARTING reduce energy consumption, waste generation, and emissions, minimizing the company’s environmental impact and creating value for its stakeholders. Achieving carbon neutrality across all its locations by 2030 underscores HARTING’s proactive approach to environmental stewardship.
Want to know more about HARTING?
Connecting on a Greener Future (SAP Business Transformation Study)
SAP Innovation Award Winner HARTING Innovates for a Sustainable Future (SAP News)
Accelerating Sustainability Goals with One-Click Carbon Tracking (SAP Innovation Awards 2025)