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ACO: Interview with Lea Woldag-Schwauna
“We want to enter into a friendly partnership with water.”
Lea Woldag-Schwauna is Head of Corporate Marketing at ACO. In this interview, she explains why ACO often remains invisible, how a complete cistern system can be accommodated in a lorry, what you can learn from water and what all this has to do with chocolate.
Lea Woldag-Schwauna
Head of Corporate Marketing
ACO says ‘we care for water.’ What would the water say about ACO?
Lea: (laughs) Well, between you and me, I think water would say something similar to ‘ACO again …’, because it comes across us very often and it's always the moment when we start to show water the way – something that water is otherwise less used to. But our aim is always to get the water back into the natural water cycle. The sooner, the better. These are usually urban areas or industrial sites, i.e. wherever we have to assume that the water must first be treated before it can be returned to nature. ACO is less likely to be found in forests and meadows, because that is where the water should return to.
It's a bit ambivalent for the water. On the one hand, you tell it where to go, but on the other hand, the water can be happy?
Exactly. I hope the water is grateful to us for taking it by the hand for a while and bringing it to where it is needed.
Host City Premium Partner
The Ocean Race Europe 2025
ACO is an official ambassador for UN Sustainable Development Goal 6*
They say that water always finds a way, as if it were a stubborn, emotional character. How emotional is this purely technical work for the employees at ACO? I've got to know you as incredibly emotional and enthusiastic.
Highly emotional. I don't think anyone can be as enthusiastic about a grease seperator, an oil separator, a drainage channel or a grate as we are. I don't know anyone else who says: A manhole cover makes my heart beat faster. In technical terms, of course, we should say ‘manhole cover’. When we're walking along somewhere, we're constantly looking down ...
... because you can see your logo everywhere.
Yes, but to be honest, sometimes we are still too careful about making our name more visible to the public. When I say where I work, people often say: ‘Oh, there's such delicious chocolate!’
Er, chocolate?
(laughs) Well, they understand ‘arko’, the shops for coffee, pastries and chocolate! And then I have to say: No, not chocolate, but manhole covers.
Water is an important resource that is increasingly worth protecting, but it can also have a destructive power. Just think of floods, storm surges, heavy rain or tsunamis.
We can't do anything about tsunamis and floods either, except that we are constantly developing the materials we use and in the area of sustainability and doing our bit to stop climate change. In the area of storm water management, we offer solutions when a lot of water needs to be buffered as quickly as possible, for example during heavy rainfall, especially when it hits heavily sealed surfaces. But of course we are not in a position to hold back a river like in the Ahr valley [there was a devastating flood in the Ahr Valley in 2021 due to an overflowing river]. In all other respects, we have a duty, like every other company in the world, to take action to ensure that, against the backdrop of climate change, there are no more heavy rainfall events.
The Ahr Valley flood has attracted a great deal of public attention. ACO manufactures products and solutions that nobody sees. As a company, you are also a typical hidden champion. What does that say about the company's self-image?
Exactly, our products are always buried, always underfoot, and we have to make them more visible. ‘Hidden champion’ is already a running gag for us, because we are of course ‘hidden’ – buried. I think our superpower lies in the fact that once you understand how valuable it is to master the element of water, you develop a great enthusiasm for it per se. Because as you say, we stand on manhole covers, on gutters and on shoe wipers, and outside many restaurants you see our ACO manhole covers with the word ‘grease trap’ on them – something small underfoot for a big, important cause: less grease in our water and therefore our sewerage system. We need to develop a love for this. Have you heard of #drainspotting instead of ‘trainspotting’? There's a whole community gripped by this fever and discovering the world underfoot.
Okay, I think I need to go undercover and google drainspotting! I understood ‘hidden’, but is there also a ‘champion’ at ACO?
ACO Green City with our StormBrixx, our underground cistern system. We have perfected StormBrixx so that you can stack them on top of each other like egg cartons. Depending on the design of a project, you only need to bring a few lorries or even one lorry to a site to build a cistern. In storm water management, it acts as a buffer, ensuring that buildings and roads are not flooded. For ACO Green City, it is the water tank that enables irrigation during dry periods. Water always finds a way – and we have to be constantly ahead of the water. We must therefore always view our products as a cycle. That's why we call it WaterCycle. And with ACO Green City, we have actually just found our hero product.
“That's our approach: Do it once. Do it right.”
Lea Woldag-Schwauna
That all sounds like much more than just ‘manhole covers’, which is not meant to sound disrespectful.
ACO grew up through the Olympics and the drainage channels. Sport has accompanied us for a long time, but that is no longer the pulse of the times. It's now about climate change, sustainability and blue-green infrastructure. And I think we have now developed the perfect system for this.
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Everyone knows the manhole cover. In Germany there is a saying: ‘Put the lid on something’, which means as much as close something off and stop talking about it. However, when it comes to issues such as climate change and corporate responsibility, you can't put the lid on anything. How do you deal with this? Does this have an impact on internal interaction and the company's direction?
It has a huge impact on us because we all feel obliged to do the right thing. We have just signed the LOI for a project with Geomar, which involves, among other things, investigating the impact of wastewater on the state of our home sea. This goes hand in hand with strong emotions. The project is a matter close to our hearts; we want to start on our doorstep to raise awareness of the need to stop discharging untreated water into the natural environment. Everyone is working on this, which is why we have an impressive laboratory environment that is dedicated exclusively to this.
We want our products to be as climate-optimised and as resistant as possible. That is our approach: “Do it once. Do it right.”
Speaking of ‘Do it right’: In its Agenda 2030, the United Nations has defined the improvement of water quality as one of 17 goals for sustainable development. ACO was selected as an ambassador company for the UN Sustainable Development Goal SDG6 ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’ for the year 2025. Obviously your actions are being recognised worldwide.
Yes, we were really pleased about that. It's a great honour, but also recognition for everyone here at ACO. And also it is an incentive to continue on this path. We are a down-to-earth family business with a regional focus, but we are always on the lookout for the best solution worldwide.
Is there a moment when you realised that invisibility is not a weakness, but a strength?
Water flows relatively silently, and ACO solutions have to work silently and invisibly with the water. Anything that constantly catches the eye or doesn't run with the water is unlikely to work well. That is our strength. We've done a good job if we don't stand out. In terms of marketing, that's a disaster! (laughs) Two hearts are beating in my chest at this point. Fortunately, we have a big design focus in our product development. Often our ace up our sleeve.
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“It really only works here because you are given responsibility and take it on.”
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“We have many silent heroes, many inventors and tinkerers. You wouldn't believe how much technology is involved everywhere. It took us several years just to get a gutter sealed.”
Lea Woldag-Schwauna
Does this attitude rub off on the employees? Are there any silent heroes and heroines at ACO?
Yes! We have some real ‘Gyro Gearlooses’ here: for example, our Smart Solutions team has just developed a dashboard that can be used to water trees via an app and check whether the tree is doing well. With all the test equipment in their technology lab, you wonder who else can find everything here. But everything is in its place. Sometimes things go wrong. That's the only way we can move forward; after all, we're developing things that don't yet exist.
We have many silent heroes, many inventors and tinkerers. You wouldn't believe how much technology is involved everywhere. It took us several years just to get a gutter sealed. Now we are the only ones who can offer completely sealed gutters in so many different variants.
That sounds like really exciting personalities. What can we learn from this attitude of the employees in terms of humility and simply doing a good job?
It's the down-to-earth attitude. Yes, we are an extremely successful company with a turnover of 1.2 billion and 5,500 employees in 50 countries. We could go out with these figures all the time. But we always know that we are smaller than nature. Of course, our systems are designed so that everything works during heavy rainfall events. But in such extreme events, you have to be even more humble and plan even better for the next time, because in the end it could be a matter of human lives.
Technical expertise, invisibility, enthusiasm, humility and a strong commitment from employees to the company. The new Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently called for more work to be done in Germany. Those who find work fulfilling have a much easier time of it.
It really only works here because you are given responsibility and take it on. Nothing is taken off you here. You can love it or reject it. If you want to know how the process works, who you have to contact for what and what the hierarchy looks like, then you're in the wrong place at ACO. We always bring together the people who have the greatest expertise. You have the feeling that you are needed because you can contribute your expertise and because you are responsible for ensuring that the product or project turns out well. It's about personal responsibility, because I know that things will get better with me. I don't mean that in a pretentious way, but I think everyone wants to have some kind of purpose in their work. This comes from the fact that at ACO we select according to competence rather than hierarchy and we are all really committed to this one thing.
“The claim ‘Racing with purpose’ suits us very well. With the right technology and innovative solutions, we can make a real contribution to protecting water and the oceans.”
Lea Woldag-Schwauna
There is an incident that expresses this well: As a Premium Partner of the Kiel start port of The Ocean Race Europe, the person responsible for communications and partnerships asked you to send him the Kiel storyline ‘We all sail in the same boat’ as a mobile phone video. He was pretty blown away when he received videos from a whole enthusiastic team.
Yes, I remember. You really have to give the entrepreneurial family credit for that. The Ahlmann family has incredible trust in their employees. This ensures that we want to live up to this trust. Our customers also trust us to ensure that their major projects are not jeopardised by water at the base and that cellars do not flood. Our motivation is to do justice to this, because who wants to disappoint trust? It is the greatest asset we have. We call it ‘naked trust’.
Well, from ‘naked trust’ I come to being clothed at least in swimming trunks: there is a beautiful book by German author John von Düffel entitled ‘Vom Wasser’ [‘About Water’]. The author is an enthusiastic open-water swimmer and describes wonderful, poetic observations about water. He understands water as a counterpart. Do you also have such a personal relationship with water at ACO?
I would say that we have a relationship with the forces of nature, the water and the wind. There is a good reason why there are so many enthusiastic sailors at ACO. Hans-Julius Ahlmann and Iver Ahlmann are successful sailors themselves.
That is why we are also a partner of The Ocean Race Europe in Kiel: our holistic approach is ultimately always aimed at climate protection, and here at the Race we can optimally present our expertise around the water. The claim ‘Racing with purpose’ suits us very well. With the right technology and innovative solutions, we can make a real contribution to protecting water and the oceans.
John von Düffel,
"From the water"
You have a very technical perspective. To be honest, I would have thought that your relationship with water is much more emotional.
We differentiate here. We all have an emotional connection to water – because it is our elixir of life. Technically, our emotion is where we see that we have been able to change things for the better. We are happy when a tree is allowed to blossom because we have ensured that it has not suffocated from de-icing salts or had any water at all. When we get a toad alive in America or a salamander under a road in Australia, our hearts open. If we have ensured that Frankfurt Airport can operate despite a heavy rainfall event, that makes us happy. We see ourselves more in a partnership with water and invite it to come where we give it space without creating obstacles. We want to enter into a friendly partnership with the water.
*ACO – Ambassador of SDG 6
Water has an enormous impact on the quality of life of the world's population. This is why the United Nations (UN) has defined the improvement of water quality as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in its 2030 Agenda. All UN member states are to achieve the desired changes by 2030.
With its holistic water-related business model, ACO contributes in particular to the realisation of the sixth (Clean Water and Sanitation), ninth (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and eleventh (Sustainable Cities and Communities) UN Sustainable Development Goals.
On the occasion of the UNESCO anniversary year 2025, ACO was selected as an ambassador for the sixth UN Sustainable Development Goal.
**Drainspotting:
#IfoundACO
Drain-spotting: The people who keep their minds in the gutter
© ACO – Interview: Ralf Löwe / sonofasailor.de
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