Alfa Laval’s Ester Codina: Sustainability in North America

Alfa Laval’s solutions are used across industries from food and beverage to energy and data centres. 

Efficiency is one of the largest near-term levers for cutting industrial emissions and costs according to the IEA.

By reducing the negative impacts of its solutions, Alfa Laval could create wider change across industries. 

As President of North America, Ester Codina focuses on ensuring Alfa Laval’s solutions continually drive impact across the US and Canada.

Alfa Laval’s sustainability targets

Alfa Laval aims to achieve net zero in its own operations by 2027, a 50% Scope 3 reduction by 2030 and net zero across the value chain by 2050. 

Circularity is one of its focusses, with practices like improving process efficiency, extending product lifespan both improving its environmental impact and resilience. 

Its high-efficiency plate and welded heat exchangers are designed to cut energy use and enable large-scale heat recovery, lowering CO₂ and operating costs.

In data centres, Alfa Laval offers solutions for free cooling, liquid cooling and heat recovery that can improve PUE and CUE, supporting lower-carbon digital growth.

Alfa Laval was ranked in Sustainability Magazine’s Top 250 Most Sustainable Companies 2025 list for its impact and efforts.

The impact of sustainability at Alfa Laval

“At Alfa Laval we like to say we’ve been doing sustainability for 140 years, which is how long the company has been around,” Ester says.

“Much of what we do is fundamental: we have equipment that helps manage heat and separate liquids. 

“In those processes we make the magic happen — you can save a decent amount of water and a decent amount of energy by optimising a process, from producing food to helping with wastewater, to producing any type of energy.”

Data centres, Esther explains, also use Alfa Laval equipment which gives the company a chance to make them even more efficient. 

Sustainability in North America

Ester explains: “We like to think sustainability doesn’t need to be that complicated.

“There’s a feeling that sustainability is expensive and complicated, and especially in North America there’s a mood that it’s not needed. But I believe there are many things we can do that aren’t difficult.

Ester attended Sustainability LIVE: Climate Week NYC 2025, held at the start of Climate Week, with more than 500 invite only attendees, more than 50 internationally acclaimed speakers and 10 interactive panel discussions.

“Events like this help us find those ideas,” she explains. 

“We see the creativity from companies and the public sector and how cities like New York can work with companies like ours, or our colleagues, to decarbonise. It’s a great experience.”