Chairman & CEO (Président-Directeur Général), Delfingen Industry S.A.
DELFINGEN & Plastic Odyssey : Gérald STREIT and Simon BERNARD
What initiatives had DELFINGEN put in place to reduce its ecological footprint particularly in the automotive sector where the use ...
About Gérald Streit
Gérald Streit, chairman and CEO of Delfingen Industry, discussed the company's strategy and performance in several interviews during 2024 and 2025. He stated that Delfingen had grown significantly in recent years, nearly tripling revenue over four years, partly by acquiring its main German competitor to become the world leader in its segment. Streit said the company would focus on debt reduction and cash generation through 2026 before resuming external growth, particularly in industrial markets. He also noted that no single client represents more than 8% of revenue, which he described as providing the company with independence. Speaking about the automotive sector, Streit described it as a "structured" industry where not all participants will succeed. He gave the example of Geely's approach to hybrid and electric vehicles as having "a certain vision," contrasting it with other automakers he characterized as appearing "lost." Streit also discussed Delfingen's environmental initiatives, stating that as a company that has been transforming plastic for 70 years it has a responsibility to address plastic pollution. He noted the company had committed to reducing CO₂ emissions under the COP21 framework and said it had begun measuring its emissions and plastic consumption. Streit described a partnership with Plastic Odyssey to develop small-scale recycling micro-factories, calling the effort part of a "beginning of an amazing journey."
Transcript (21 segments)
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Interviewer0:08
How did your partnership begin?
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Gérald Streit0:12
I don't have a very good memory of the beginning, but we had this project to work on plastic pollution in different aspects locally. Then we had a colleague who contacted Simon in 2021 to have a speech at our regular executive committee meeting. And then it was complex with the Covid-19 and so on. They kept in touch and we started the project later on, step by step.
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Interviewer0:45
What are the fundamental values that guide Delfingen in terms of environmental responsibility?
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Gérald Streit0:50
For Delfingen, we are a family-owned company and one of our main values is responsibility. So you have to be conscious that your acts have some consequences. And we are transforming plastic since 70 years now. We cannot be blind to the plastic pollution. It's a good product, we are working with it, but we have to fight the plastic pollution. It's a key point for the next generations. So it's part of our responsibility, as a transformer, to work on this subject.
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Interviewer1:26
As founder of Plastic Odyssey, what is your vision for the reduction and recovery of plastic waste?
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Simon1:30
Our motto at Plastic Odyssey is really to try to clean up the past by improving waste management, especially in low to middle-income countries, to avoid the plastic that has been produced so far to go into the environment, but also to build a future where we use less plastic, especially all the single-use plastic, the packaging we don't really need. So it's really two actions that drive us: cleaning up the past by recycling, but also building a future by raising awareness and educating children.
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Interviewer2:01
Can you tell us how Plastic Odyssey transforms plastic waste into resources and what are the main technical challenges you face?
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Simon2:05
So the first action is to find a way to turn something that has low, very low value — the plastic waste nobody wants. It's not like metal, like copper; it's something that has really almost no value today. So the challenge, if you want this plastic to be collected, is to find a way to turn it into something useful, to add inner value, so that we can create local economies and create jobs. Help people make a living by collecting this plastic and turning it into a new material, a new product. So that's the main challenge: how do we find a business model, a viable business model, for these small social businesses, so that it doesn't require subsidies or money and it can be self-sufficient, in a way.
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Interviewer2:59
What initiatives has Delfingen put in place to reduce its ecological footprint, particularly in the automotive sector where the use of plastic waste is massive?
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Gérald Streit3:04
We started to measure our CO2 emissions and plastic consumption. Plastic consumption is really easy for us. CO2 emissions are the conversion of our usage of electricity, transportation, and so on. We are committed, based on the COP 21, to reduce our CO2 emissions. For the plastic pollution, we have different ways. The first approach is to minimize all the scrap, using as little raw material as possible. Second — that is very difficult in the automotive industry — is to include as much recycled plastic as we can, already fine-tuned by the different raw material makers. We launched this year a full portfolio of our catalog with full recycled plastic materials. We have different kinds of products internally. Some are quite easy to produce with recycled material — it's thick components made by plastic molding. Two are much more difficult: plastic tubes — it's very difficult because it's a very thin plastic process and recycled plastic doesn't match all the requirements — and textile sleeves. So we have to find the perfect yarns that are used from recycled plastic.
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Interviewer4:31
How are these microfactories innovative and representative of Delfingen's vision of sustainable innovation?
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Gérald Streit4:35
It's key. If we have a 4-degree average temperature increase, some locations will not be viable, so there will be more fights, conflicts, tensions worldwide. And secondly, plastic pollution — nobody knows what will be the impact on our brains, bodies, and all the animal species. So it's part of our responsibility. We are users; we have to take care of it.
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Simon5:08
Yeah, for us, it's the core mission of Plastic Odyssey: to try to find a way to reduce the impact of ocean pollution, especially plastic pollution. We are now seeing, looking at the latest scientific reviews, that there is a direct link between plastic and climate and carbon emissions. 65% of plastic waste today is being burnt openly, which emits a lot of CO2, and that's something we didn't even think about at the beginning of Plastic Odyssey. We were just focusing on the impact of plastic pollution on the ocean and biodiversity, the impact on human health, but now we also see that there is a big impact on carbon emissions, and that recycling it and avoiding it being burnt could be a really good way to cut CO2 emissions as well.
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Interviewer6:00
To what extent do Plastic Odyssey's initiatives benefit local communities, particularly in terms of awareness-raising and employment?
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Simon6:04
So there's this big and ambitious mission to create local recycling economies that will benefit small communities, empower local entrepreneurs, and help recycle this waste. But there is also a big impact we want on the youngest generation, especially because what we say is that one child can educate six adults. So it's important to really raise awareness among the youngest but also consumers in general, to help change behaviors and reduce the use of plastic. That's also the big impact we want: pushing people to buy less plastic and to change their habits a bit.
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Interviewer6:50
How does Delfingen support the local economy and social well-being in the areas where it operates?
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Gérald Streit6:54
We created a foundation in 2007. Initially, it was a family foundation to help and support the children of our colleagues locally, because we are implemented in 24 locations in 22 countries, most of the time in underdeveloped countries like the Philippines, Honduras, and so on. The situation around this family is sometimes very difficult — we have some ethical questions — and so we created this foundation to support the people, because it's not the mission of the company. A company must be profitable to be sustainable, and the mission of the foundation is to support the locals. We have scholarship programs, education programs, health programs, and so on. And one key situation is, as Simon mentioned, the environment. Because for most of them it's not important, but it's key, it's key for the future. It's a mid- to long-term vision that we have to implement first. And it's why we have this pillar in the foundation: environment.
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Interviewer8:14
What are the first results in terms of waste recycling from your previous micro-factories?
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Simon8:18
So the model of the small-scale factory we are building has a capacity of 300 tons each year and 20 jobs created per factory. One factory is about the size of one to two maritime containers, so it's a rather small unit that can be implemented everywhere. One small factory can treat the equivalent of 10,000 consumers' waste. So small cities — you can imagine having many small containers like that everywhere to be able to treat all the waste produced.
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Interviewer9:01
To conclude, do you have a message to pass on to those who closely follow your initiatives and share your environmental concerns?
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Simon9:06
Never, never, never give up. And I think stay connected, because that's just the beginning of an amazing journey we are building here in the Philippines with these two first micro-factories. We are really hopeful for the future to see more and more plastic being collected, transformed into useful products, and have less plastic in the ocean. It's important, it's a very big task to start and to continue. We have to start from one point and increase it step by step.