Profit & Planet: Hilti NZ - Closing the loop on power tools

Friday, 16 January 2026

Hilti’s global circularity programme reuses about 27% of spare parts from its power tools each year.

Profit & Planet is a series profiling finalists on the Sustainable Business Awards’ Next List, an annual list of the best innovators, entrepreneurs, projects and organisations in the green space.

Fewer than 10% of resources are reused globally, with the construction industry contributing more than 30% of the waste in landfill. But multi-national hardware company Hilti does things differently.

It has adopted a circular economic model across its business globally and that includes transforming power tool ownership via a “reduce, reuse and recycle” strategy.

Hilti New Zealand spokesperson Raman Kumar says they sell, lease and repair tools and batteries, and collect them at the end of their life to ensure reuse and recycling.

“Our circularity programme extends tool life by three times and recovers 90% of components. About 27% of spare parts are reused each year, and on a global scale that’s huge - equating to 190,000 spare parts.”

In New Zealand, the programme has saved a cumulative net $875,000 and 25 tonneof C02, and diverted 25 tonnes from recycling since 2022, so Kumar answered some questions for The Post.

What is the gap in the market your business' product or service fills?

Tools are a bit like fast fashion in New Zealand as there is a tendency for people to just buy new ones because they like them more than they need them, and then they’re not used enough.

So the question is do you want to buy 20 new things from a manufacturer which are cheap but low quality, or do you want to buy something that makes sense for your purposes, is good quality and lasts longer.

Our value proposition is that we offer quality products to purchase, and then our circular programme reduces the waste generated by and the costs of construction, and increases productivity.

It’s quite a unique thing that we do in New Zealand, and it is filling a gap in the market, so we are pushing it heavily as a company to show that it can be done locally.

What are your ambitions for the business?

We want our circular model to become the way of doing things in New Zealand. It is accepted practice in Europe, and we’d like fleet management of tools to become widely accepted here too.

It’s a growth strategy, so it is important for us to sell our value proposition to our customers. In New Zealand, we do see a lot of customers who don’t think this way, but we believe that circularity should be a default.

So we want our customers to pick it up and adopt it as a way of working for the industry. We do have customers who go above and beyond on sustainability, but we want to convert more to the Hilti vision of making construction better.

Does New Zealand do enough to ensure green businesses develop & thrive?

There’s a lot of good intentions, everyone wants to do what is right. But when the rubber hits the road, the commercial aspect tends to take the front seat.

There’s not much incentivisation to be sustainable, so it’s a choice a client makes. If we had more and stronger collaboration between industry and government that would help.

The Sustainable Business Council and the Green Building Council are trying, but they could use some more support because they are restricted by resources.

So is New Zealand doing something in the sustainability space? Yes. Are we moving at the pace we should be as a developed economy? Probably not. In construction practices, New Zealand is still quite behind.