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The Swiss retailer likes to promote sustainability and regional product selection. But for construction sites around Grüze’s distribution center in Winterthur ZH, cheap price was probably more important than regionality. According to a report from “Landbote”, the wholesaler placed the order with a company that imports cheap asphalt from Germany.
In times of Corona and economic bottlenecks, this really annoys the critics. “I can’t understand Coop’s thought processes,” says Beat Aeppli, owner and managing director of Winterthur’s Wistrag road and civil engineering company, the “Landbote.” The reason: on the one hand, Coop advertises with the commercialization of sustainable and regional products under the “Miini Region” label.
And on the other hand now: the wholesaler awards such a large order to the company Thurgau Convia AG, which is a subsidiary of the Storz Group based in Tuttlingen, Germany. Several thousand tons of asphalt are being transported from Germany for the new construction site. Aeppli estimates that the order will be around 1.5 million francs.
No offer was obtained from the region
The assignment was not the first for Convia. Over the past four years, the canton of Zurich has ordered 5 million francs from the company. “Convia won four open tenders,” confirms a media spokesman for the newspaper’s Zurich construction department.
Aeppli asked in the region if Coop had also contacted local suppliers about offers in the Grüze case. The result: nothing. “Companies in the region cannot keep up with offers from Germany,” says Aeppli, who is also president of the Winterthur builders association and sits on the board of directors of the asphalt production company Tobega in Neftenbach. It never imports materials from Germany. “We have an interest in the value creation that happens here,” he says.
Environmental requirements are different in Germany
From an ecological point of view, critics are upset by the order. Building materials need to be approached from further afield. The van drove back and forth at least 250 times from Welschingen near Engen in the German state of Baden-Württemberg to Winterthur. That is 100 kilometers per trip. In addition to these kilometers, critics also point out that in Germany there were “less stringent environmental regulations” on asphalt production, the report says. (vnf)
