Eco-design is not a compromise. It is a requirement.

Renaud Heitz

CTO

LinkedIn →

October 28,2026

Performance, cost-efficiency and environmental impact are not competing priorities. At Exotec, we believe they reinforce one another, and eco-design can be the lever that makes the other two possible.

Doing more with less : is it eco-design?

Eco-design, in its simplest definition, means achieving the same result with less material. Less steel, less plastic, less energy. By pushing this logic across our products, we found that it consistently leads towards simplicity, and therefore towards elegance.

A lighter component is not a degraded component: it has been better thought through. A system that consumes less energy to produce the same movement is not a constrained system: it has been better designed.

In most cases, a good eco-design decision also proves beneficial for cost and for performance. The debate between sustainability and efficiency is, in the vast majority of cases, a false one.

What we have actually done

At Exotec, eco-design has become a genuine practice, not a statement of intent. We started with the racks that hold our totes in the warehouse. By working seriously on their structural design and pushing finite element analysis, we reduced the amount of steel required by 30% for a rack that does exactly the same job, with the same load resistance. Less material, less carbon, lower cost: three benefits from a single design decision.

We then reworked our totes. The objective was to use recycled plastic while maintaining identical mechanical properties. After several years of development, we got there: 100% recycled plastic in Europe, with no compromise on durability,.

These two examples illustrate a straightforward reality: environmental constraints, taken seriously, lead to better products.

A method, not an intention

Eco-design only works when it is integrated into the development process. At Exotec, we follow a framework inspired by continuous improvement: define what we want to achieve, measure the current state with a full lifecycle analysis, identify levers for improvement, act, verify that results match objectives, and repeat.

This cycle is embedded in our product development milestones. At every stage (kick-off, design, industrialisation, production) environmental objectives are defined, measured and verified. This rigour is part of daily life at Exotec, present in every design decision.

What we want to build

There is still much to do. Several directions look promising for the years ahead.

The first is deepening the environmental capabilities of our hardware engineers. We want environmental thinking to become a design reflex, present from the earliest sketches.

We are also exploring new materials, cardboard in particular, as an alternative to plastic on certain components. We are working on the energy efficiency of our ASRS robots: achieving the same performance with less electricity. And we are watching closely the initiatives around low-carbon steel, for applications where steel remains unavoidable.

The roadmap is not fixed, but the direction is clear. We are convinced it is the right one.

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