You are Maja Zupan, Strategy Director of Alpina Domus, an appliance maker in Velenje, Slovenia. The board has just authorised €9.0 million for green innovation, and before a single euro moves you have to tell the chair what environmental posture the company is going to take.
The situation
Alpina Domus makes washing machines, dishwashers and built-in ovens in a single plant: €218 million of revenue in 2025, a 7.2% EBIT margin and 1,180 people. A little over half the volume is sold under its own brand, known across the EU for durability; the other 46% is white label for two larger groups, Nordhaus and Verel. Two rivals, Brenner and Solvane, earn 10–12% margins, spend about three times as much on research and sit a full energy-label class above you. Seventy-one per cent of your plant's electricity comes off the grid.
On 4 March 2026 two notices arrived four hours apart. Brussels confirmed that Ecodesign and Energy Labelling thresholds for wet appliances will tighten in 24 months: 38% of your models, carrying €83 million of revenue, will fail them without redesign. Then the tender desk reported that a €19 million, three-year white-label contract you had held for six years had gone to a competitor one label class higher. Winning that volume back on the open market would take price cuts of 4–6%, and both Nordhaus and Verel say that without a credible environmental strategy they will take a second supplier within 18 months: another €41 million of volume in play.
Two outside decisions are still open, and both will be settled before the money has to move: a national subsidy of up to 30% of clean-manufacturing investment, expected but not enacted, and an EU carbon-border adjustment on imported components that would add about €2.4 million a year. You proposed a green programme in 2023 and again in 2024; both times the board said no on payback. The chair, Andrej Lah, approved this one with a condition: he will not accept a plan that clears the new thresholds and stops there.