Saving Energy Without Pointing Fingers
Interview with Christoph Gasser, Managing Director of Hansa Armaturen GmbH
For over a century, the Hansa brand has been synonymous with attractive fittings. Eight years ago, it finally became part of the Oras Group, with which it is to merge into the 'Perfect Flow Company'. In an interview with Wirtschaftsforum, Managing Director Christoph Gasser talked about fittings that help save energy, and he shared why he recently, with a wink, sent an apprentice to the Federal Ministry of Economics.
Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Gasser, the fittings of your brands Hansa and Oras can now do much more than just provide water. What additional features can your customers rely on?
Christoph Gasser: In the Health-and-Care sector, where high hygiene standards are particularly important for obvious reasons, sensor-controlled fittings that allow completely touchless operation are playing an increasingly important role, while the traditional solution with particularly long levers, which the clinical staff, for example in the operating room, can operate with their elbows instead of their hands for hygiene reasons, remains established. Meanwhile, in care facilities, scald protection is an extremely important function: for example, our HANSAMEDIPRO faucets are factory-fitted with a hot water lock, so that the end users, who often have cognitive or physical impairments in the care environment, cannot dispense water from the faucet that is warmer than 38°C. To perform thermal disinfection with 70°C hot water, the product must first be unlocked with a special tool to ensure the full safety of patients.
Wirtschaftsforum: What innovations are currently playing a special role in the private user sector?
Christoph Gasser: Long before the current energy crisis, we developed solutions that consistently support users in saving energy. One of our digital hand showers, which we developed together with ETH Zurich, has a display and a diode on the shower head, where the user receives feedback on the amount and temperature of the water used and the energy consumption in real time. We have also transferred this proven concept to new service models, where the data on flow rate and temperature are uploaded to the cloud via a gateway and then made available to the customer through a dashboard on his mobile device. It is important to us not to equip our products with a pedagogical wagging finger, but instead to offer them in the spirit of a realistic and proactive solution, following the motto: What you don't measure, you can't change. We are of course aware that with our products in the context of the current energy crisis, we are hitting a certain nerve. With a wink, therefore, a few weeks ago we sent one of our apprentices with a 9-euro ticket and a digital hand shower to Berlin to provide the Federal Minister of Economy with realistic solutions that can help him further reduce his water consumption.
Wirtschaftsforum: Are there also solutions for customers who want to leave energy saving entirely to the faucet, instead of adapting their user behavior based on real-time feedback themselves?
Christoph Gasser: In addition to our products that focus on conscious information and behavioral change, we can of course also provide faucets where the water flow per minute is factory-limited without leading to noticeable reductions in comfort for the users. We also offer products with a so-called cold water start: here, regardless of the actual lever position, only cold water comes out of the faucet initially unless the user actively moves the lever.
Wirtschaftsforum: Your Hansa Active Digital Jet has now been awarded the prestigious Red Dot Award, along with numerous other accolades. How important is attractive design in the hand shower, beyond functionality?
Christoph Gasser: Most builders like to incorporate their own stylistic preferences when outfitting bathrooms – thus, appealing aesthetics play a crucial role in this market segment. With a variety of different furnishing trends, it is equally important to offer a broad spectrum of different variants. While very unusual designs often receive very positive feedback at trade shows, many end customers ultimately prefer a more classic design language that meets the taste over many years. Our brands Hansa and Oras can both confidently meet these demands. A very exciting dialogue about further aesthetic and functional innovations is currently unfolding between our Italian Head of Design and our German Head of Innovation, about which I am very excited.