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Water is a central resource to all aspects of life and business. Therefore, water management is a crucial element to ensure sustainable use of resources and safeguard business continuity.

We understand sustainable use of water as the efficient water management practices throughout all stages of our operations, always taking into account the water needs of surrounding communities.

Our approach to water resource management recognizes its vital importance to the environment, health, and our operations. Our manufacturing processes require water, particularly ultrapure water for wafer cleaning and etching processes, and cooling water to regulate the temperature of equipment and operations. A small portion of the water withdrawn is consumed, while the remainder is treated and either returned to the ecosystem or supplied to third parties

Infineon views water as a natural resource that is of material importance to our business operations. This perspective is embedded in our CSR Policy.

In the area of water management, Infineon’s strategies and actions are integrated into the Infineon Integrated Management Program for Environment, Energy, Safety and Health (IMPRES). IMPRES is certified according to ISO 14001 for environmental management systems, among others, at our production sites worldwide.

To mitigate the negative impacts of our water withdrawals and consumption, Infineon places a strong focus on water recycling and reuse within our own operations. It has the potential to lower the demand for natural or municipal water sources and generate cost savings. To evaluate the effectiveness of our aim to reduce water withdrawal and consumption, we track our recycling and reuse rate on an annual basis. In the 2025 fiscal year, our recycling and reuse rate was 32 percent.

Additionally, our production sites – particularly those located in high water stress regions –pursue a variety of initiatives, actions, and technologies for water recycling. The focus lies both on continuing existing actions as well as developing new ones for the future. Wastewater from production processes is also collected, treated in our in-house wastewater recycling systems, and reused whenever possible.

The following are concrete examples of the actions already in place:

  • At the Villach (Austria) and Regensburg (Germany) sites, for example, groundwater originally used for cooling processes is treated to produce ultrapure water through a combination of water purification technologies such as reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration.
  • At sites, such as Bangkok (Thailand) and Mesa (Arizona, USA), wastewater from reverse osmosis systems is reused to supply wet scrubbers.
  • Significant volumes of production wastewater are returned to the ultrapure water systems at sites like Tijuana (Mexico) and Dresden (Germany), where it is purified and reused in production.
  • State-of-the-art water recycling technology has been installed at our new factory building in Kulim (Malaysia).

Infineon also intends to integrate the latest water recycling technologies into our new factory in Dresden (Germany) by fall 2026, which will significantly enhance our water recycling capacity going forward. Additionally, Infineon launched a project in the 2024 fiscal year to identify water-saving opportunities at its production sites. This initiative includes planned investments at the Dresden (Germany) and Melaka (Malaysia) sites aimed at significantly improving their water recovery capabilities. These initiatives are expected to be completed by 2030.

Water scarcity serves as an indicator of competition for water resources and is informally defined as the ratio of human water demand to the available water supply. As part of its water management efforts, Infineon has examined potential water risks and identified water scarcity as the only significant risk. Against this backdrop, an annual water scarcity risk assessment is conducted using the World Resources Institute's Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas (Aqueduct 4.0 data). The analysis covered all production sites and was conducted in two steps to consider both current conditions (base year 2025) and future developments (2030 outlook). This forward-looking assessment allows us to anticipate potential future challenges and incorporate these findings into our water strategy. This helps us to ensure that our resource planning and operations support sustainable and resilient water use.

The assessment results allowed us to identify areas with a high or extremely high risk of water stress. Three of our sites are located in such areas: Mesa (Arizona, USA), Tijuana (Mexico) and Bangkok (Thailand). However, water withdrawals in such areas affected by water risks represent only 1.7 percent of our total water withdrawals across all sites.

We already emphasized the high priority of the water topic in the 2014 fiscal year by endorsing the UN’s “CEO Water Mandate”. This is a special initiative of the UN Secretary-General that aims to promote a positive impact on the ongoing global water crisis by joining forces with global business leaders to advance water sustainability solutions. As an endorser, Infineon pledges to show continuing support to water preservation and conservation as seen in our environmental sustainability practices and concretely in the efficient management of water at our production sites.

Regarding our supply chain, our environmental requirements for suppliers are defined in our Supplier Code of Conduct. It requires suppliers and service providers to implement an environmental management system, including the responsible use of water. This requirement is then evaluated as part of the supplier’s assessment which is performed at the initial step of the business relations. This assessment is repeated on a yearly basis.

Additionally, we support our water conservation initiatives with employee training and awareness campaigns, fostering a culture of sustainability that encourages water-efficient practices and environmental responsibility throughout our organization.

Have a look in our Sustainability Report.