Sustainability & Efficiency.
The BMW Group’s parent plant is located in the heart of one of Munich’s northern neighborhoods. BMW’s beating heart is in the Bavarian state capital of Munich, opposite the Group’s highrise headquarters – the famous BMW Four-Cylinder – and bordering on the Olympic Park. Considering the plant’s location in the middle of a city and with residential areas directly surrounding it, the BMW Group puts great emphasis on efficient, innovative and sustainable production technologies in automotive engineering.
Efficient and resource-conserving high-tech paint shop.
The parent plant in Munich has one of the most state-of-the-art paint shops in the entire automotive industry. IPP (integrated paint process) technology means that two primer coats are applied ‘wet-on-wet’. By doing away with the entire filler process, this technology is not only considerably more efficient but also minimizes the consumption of resources: natural gas consumption and CO2 emissions are reduced by around a half and electricity consumption by more than a quarter.
160,000 bees on the plant roof.
There is a real buzz above the parent plant’s roofs in Munich. Around 160,000 bees call these roofs home and pollinate the green areas in and around the Olympic Park. This is thanks to the work of several voluntary beekeepers who have day jobs at the Munich plant and have made beekeeping their hobby. Almost all of the German plants now support bee colonies. Maybe there will soon be honey ‘made at BMW Group Plant Munich’?
Combined heat and power generation at the parent plant and the FIZ Research and Innovation Center.
The BMW Group put two new CHP generation plants into operation in December 2019. These systems, which were installed at the parent plant and at the FIZ Research and Innovation Center, turn natural gas into electricity and use the waste heat from this process to satisfy the heating demands of the Munich site. The Munich plant is therefore able to heat its building and all its systems without drawing on external sources. The total electricity and heating demands of the plant are comparable with those of a town with a population of about 70,000 people.
GREEN UP!
The uppermost roof of our state-of-the-art paintshop is almost 33 metres high and covered in a carpet of moss. At roughly 10,000 m2, the moss carpet is way bigger than a football pitch. The living roof not only helps to prevent the outside of the building from heating up but also reduces noise emissions into the neighbourhood. In addition, the greenery helps to improve air quality by binding dust particles.