Innovation and Product Sustainability at Covia

At Covia, our commitment to ESG helps us meet the various needs of our stakeholders through innovation built on valued partnerships.

To support our customers and stakeholders, we take a comprehensive approach to product innovation, quality, and assurance. We encourage our Team Members to embrace creative problem-solving and collaboration, and we’re investing in the tools needed to deliver solutions for our customers and the markets we serve. We’re expanding our current innovation capacity, as well as investing in new capabilities and competencies to support industry-leading innovation.

Throughout our ESG journey, we have developed a portfolio of products and services that support people and the planet, including dust suppression technology for worker safety and health, glass-grade sand for sustainable packaging, micronized silica for home insulation and sand for water filtration. While many of our existing products improve everyday life, we are continuing to look for ways to innovate additional solutions that contribute to enhanced quality of life.

“We have a vision to dramatically increase the vitality index within the business,” explains Lan Deng, VP, Technology for Covia. “For us, that will mean a focus on driving sales coming from new products and applications that launch over seven years. These new products will deliver sustained competitive advantage, growth potential and cash to the business.”

Covia’s dedication to investing in innovation goes far beyond building a strong innovation portfolio and launching new products and applications. We are dedicated to investing in innovative leadership to diversify our talent base and building a stronger company. To this end, Lan believes there are a few characteristics shared by innovation leaders: risk tolerance, learning agility, collaboration, and teamwork.

“One should not be afraid to take risks to explore and try new things; the ability to learn quickly is important as well,” she said. “From idea inception to product commercialization, cross-functional collaboration is the key.”

Recently Covia hosted an Innovation Tournament, which was created to immerse a cross-functional, cross-geographical group of Covia Team Members in a challenging process to identify realistic innovation opportunities for Covia. The dynamic process began with teams generating ideas before the meeting. These ideas included incremental improvements, new product ideas, cost reduction efforts, and more. During a two-day session, teams formed around the ideas that held the most potential. Ultimately, 14 ideas were voted to the top for further development.

Lan believes that agility and commitment are a common trait for the people working within Covia. “What impresses me most is the agility and can-do attitude of our people,” she said. “Covia Team Members make things happen despite obstacles and constraints, and they do it fast.”