At Dover, our commitment to sustainability extends beyond our operations. We are committed to creating long-term economic value by developing products that are designed to help our customers meet their sustainability goals, run their operations more efficiently, and satisfy evolving regulatory and environmental standards. We believe that sustainability-driven innovation in response to customer demand helps us contribute positively to enhanced resource efficiency and waste reduction while presenting a valuable growth opportunity.

Our businesses are well-positioned to capitalize on increasing requirements for sustainability, safety, and energy efficiency, and we strive to integrate sustainability into the design, development, and use of our products. This includes developing products and solutions that enable our customers to use resources more efficiently and decrease greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)—all while increasing reliability and durability.

We believe that innovative, sustainable products support Dover’s mission of redefining what’s possible by helping our customers and their businesses thrive while reducing impact on the planet. We primarily pursue innovation for sustainable products in three key opportunity areas:

Clean Technology Icon
Optimize Resources and Materials
Circular Economy Icon

How Dover Innovates for Sustainable Products

Our product management and research and development (R&D) teams lead innovation and sustainable product development. R&D efforts are led by our individual operating companies to be more market-focused and better serve our loyal customers. To identify opportunities for developing new products, product management and R&D teams regularly engage with our customers to assess ways we can help them achieve their business and sustainability objectives. These efforts are complemented with internal analysis of potential opportunities and unmet market needs.

In 2021, four of Dover's largest Operating Companies by emissions participated in workshops to formally integrate sustainability into the product development stage-gate process. Workshop participants developed definitions and thresholds for six different sustainable product categories and were encouraged to use the thresholds when designing new products or refining existing products.

Sustainable product categories:

  • Advances clean technology
  • Significantly improves customer resource use
  • Advances the circular economy
  • Facilitates safer work environments
  • Eliminates harmful chemicals from customer use
  • Decreases embodied emissions and water

In 2022, Dover's largest Operating Companies by emissions plan to focus on product use phase emission reduction initiatives and integrate checkpoints focusing on opportunities to reduce product energy usage into new product development to set a path towards achieving Dover's 2030 Scope 3 science-based target. For more information on Dover’s science-based target, see our Energy and Emissions webpage.

In 2020, R&D spend, including qualifying engineering costs, represented 2.1% of our annual revenue, and our average R&D spend as a percentage of annual revenue has been steadily increasing since 2014 when it was 1.5% of annual revenue. We increased our R&D spend partly in response to customer needs for more efficient, safer, and sustainable products. Ultimately, we view R&D as critical to maintaining the long-term growth and competitiveness of our offerings in the marketplace in a world with an ever-increasing demand for more sustainable solutions.

Research and Development Spending

DOVER OPERATING COMPANIES INNOVATING FOR SUSTAINABILITY

See how our operating companies are innovating to provide products that deliver sustainability benefits to our customers and our environment.

Pursuing Opportunities in Clean Technology

As a global manufacturer and solutions provider, we recognize that we can promote clean technology, or technology that has a lower impact on the environment, throughout our product portfolio and value chain.

Enhancing Access to Electric and Hydrogen Fueling: Dover Fueling Solutions and OPW

The businesses in our Clean Energy & Fueling segment (Dover Fueling Solutions and OPW) offer fueling solutions for lower-carbon alternative fuels, such as compressed natural gas (CNG) and hydrogen fueling. We are also exploring liquid natural gas (LNG) fueling applications. Our Dover Fueling Solutions business provides charging stations for Electric Vehicles (EVs) via partnerships with ABB in Europe and with ChargePoint in North America. Providing charging stations for EVs, as well as other alternative clean fueling solutions, creates an opportunity to reduce GHGs from transportation.

Reducing GHG through CNG, Biogas and Electric Vehicles: Environmental Solutions Group (ESG)

Our Environmental Solutions Group (ESG) focuses its innovation efforts on making solid waste handling and recycling management cleaner, safer, and more efficient. ESG’s waste hauling fleet customers are often asked by municipalities and businesses to both address the need to reduce carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) and divert waste effectively. ESG developed a CNG fuel delivery system to power waste collection trucks that is designed to reduce CO2e by 25% or 25 tons per year when compared to its diesel counterpart. The organic fraction these trucks carry can then be processed to generate biogas. The biogas is then utilized as an energy source for fueling the truck. Heil also is focused on research to enable development of Electric Refuse Collection Vehicles or E-RCVs. Today, Heil is working with large municipalities and major waste haulers in the fielding of electric-powered RCV’s. By converting just one refuse collection vehicle from diesel to electric propulsion, on average - 100 Metric Tons per year of GHG emissions are saved.

Optimizing Use of Resources and Materials

We strive to help our customers meet their sustainability goals by developing products that help them efficiently use and conserve resources and optimize energy use.

Saving Energy and Water and Increasing Recyclability: Pump Solutions Group

Our Pump Solutions Group (PSG) offers pump solutions that enable safe and efficient transfer of critical and valuable fluids and materials that require optimal performance and peace-of-mind reliability. To that end, PSG recently developed a seal-less pump solution for its market leading Blackmer vane pumps that helps customers eliminate fuel spillage during fueling processes. In addition, PSG’s EvoClean Laundry Dispensing System supports more efficient use of chemicals by accurately diluting and dispensing concentrated cleaning chemicals for safe and effective use in commercial laundry applications. EvoClean also uses 85% less energy and 60% less water (3.7 gallons per load) in its application when compared to traditional laundry dispensers. PSG's newest brand, Quantex, includes Quantex’s Eco-Pumps that are made from recyclable material. These pumps allow the dilution and mixing of concentrates directly in a wide variety of applications, taking water out of the distribution channel and significantly decreasing consumer product packaging which means we can reduce carbon emissions and create a positive environmental impact.

Reducing Methane Leakage and Helping Oil & Gas Operators Achieve Sustainability Goals: Cook Compression

At Cook Compression, and its parent company Dover Precision Components, we develop solutions that help oil and gas operators reduce emissions, achieve their sustainability goals and comply with regulations. In downstream oil and gas, where zero-emissions is expected and regulated, COOK CLEAN packing, which uses inert gas to create a barrier to gas leakage in gas compressors, is the industry’s leading purged packing system. In upstream gas gathering compressors operating in the United States today, an estimated 200,000 outdated packing systems are venting 200 million cubic feet of methane into the open atmosphere every day – a volume equivalent to filling two enclosed professional football stadiums. Updating to Cook Compression packing with TruTech™ materials could reduce this volume by 80%. For midstream oil and gas operators, Cook Compression Static-Pac® units ensure zero emissions during compressor stand-by. Beyond compressor packing and the ability to minimize direct emissions, Cook Compression valve solutions increase operational efficiency and reliability to reduce indirect environmental impacts by reducing compressor energy usage – which can significantly reduce CO2 emissions from the compressor and its driver.

Optimizing Energy Use and Enabling Carbon Neutral Heating and Cooling Solutions: SWEP

SWEP optimizes the use of energy, material, and space in heating and cooling systems. Heat exchangers transfer heat from one media to another, causing the desired temperature change. But in this process, some of the energy can be wasted – the exact amount depends, in large part, upon the type of exchanger used. Brazed plate heat exchangers (BPHEs) by SWEP are specifically designed to maximize heating and cooling performance while simultaneously minimizing energy loss. SWEP’s BPHEs are extremely compact compared with other technologies. In addition, BPHEs have a smaller carbon footprint, are significantly smaller and lighter than other technologies such as shell and tube and, more importantly, are more efficient.

Cool with CO2: Advansor

Advansor’s innovative sustainable refrigeration systems have always focused exclusively on using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a refrigerant. CO2 as a refrigerant has no effect on the climate or environment, and Advansor's strong focus on developing energy efficient systems provides the lowest possible energy consumption. Advansor offers a range of products based on this one natural refrigerant and produces systems for a wide spectrum of applications including small discounters, big food retailers and cold chain industrial applications.

Advansor Sustainable CO2

Enabling the Circular Economy

In an effort to support a more circular economy, many of our operating companies assess the entire lifecycle for products — from sourcing and manufacturing to customer use and disposal. Our solutions help enable customers to keep their products in use longer and shift away from, for instance, single-use plastics.

Keeping Products Going Longer: Dover Fueling Solutions and Markem-Imaje

As industrial machinery experts, we are committed to helping our customers keep their products and materials in use longer. We are developing innovative, digitally-enabled equipment monitoring and maintenance solutions across many of our products, including Dover Fueling Solution’s use of data, analytics, and remote monitoring to improve operational outcomes. This reduces downtime for customers while simultaneously reducing the GHG emissions associated with requiring a technician to travel to customer sites for maintenance and machine replacement. Markem-Imaje also offers easily replaceable modular parts that allow for quick and easy substitution of the shorter lifespan parts within its marking and coding machines. Markem-Imaje deploys an advanced service exchange program for more complex modules that can be refurbished and brought back into operations.

Markem-Imaje Service Exchange Program

Circular Economy

As manufacturers continue to embrace the concept of the circular economy, we support this important concept for furthering sustainability within our own products, solutions, and value chain. The circular economy is based on the principle of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems as opposed to the current take-make-waste model. Integrating the principles of the circular economy helps organizations take responsibility for their products within every layer of their value chain, or essentially from “cradle to cradle”—from raw materials to production to use to disposal, preferably through maintenance, reuse, remanufacturing, recycling, or return to raw materials.

Enabling Circularity Through Intelligent Coding: Markem-Imaje

Today’s consumers demand transparency into how products are sourced and manufactured. Innovative businesses are meeting this demand for corporate responsibility by entering the circular economy. Our Markem-Imaje circularity solutions and packaging intelligence solutions empower you to take control of every step of the product journey. Identify, track and trace products through the supply chain to the end consumer and beyond. With the right solution, a code empowers consumers to resell, return, re-use or recycle items when they are done with them. And it can reduce waste by enabling secondary sales channels with product commerce. An intelligent code enables a more sustainable supply chain with real-time analytics and routing optimization possibilities while protecting your brand and the planet from harmful counterfeits with product authentication.

Markem-Imaje solutions also help address the important issue of reducing single-use plastics. By providing proven inks and marking solutions that enable coding on returnable glass bottles, refillable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, or on easily recyclable aluminum cans, Markem-Imaje’s innovative marking solutions enable customers to eliminate single-use plastics in their value chain.

Reprocessing Plastic Products: MAAG

MAAG Group systems play a key role in enabling a more circular economy for plastics. MAAG Group serves the entire plastics value chain from virgin polymers to processing of parts to end-of-life recycling, giving it deep insight into how its products can enable the effective return of used plastics material into high quality products. MAAG Group’s recycling processing solutions address the technical challenges posed by working with often highly contaminated used plastics material streams, including filtration technologies that remove contaminants such as paper, metal, or wood from used plastics and color control systems for recycled plastic pellets. For example, MAAG Group’s ETTLINGER’s melt filters allow recyclers to more efficiently remove contaminants from highly contaminated loads of used plastics with a reduced loss of material compared to alternative solutions. MAAG Group’s product portfolio of pelletizers, dryers, pulverizers, and melt pumps are used in a wide variety of applications that support closing the loop for plastic materials.