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Manufacture 2030 is a digital platform aiming to reduce the global energy consumption in the manufacturing sector. We spoke to the Founder and Executive Chairman, Martin Chilcott to find out more about this growing problem and how they plan to help solve it.

Could you tell us about Manufacture 2030?

The manufacturing sector and its 17m factories generates more than a third of the world’s carbon emissions. These emissions are playing a huge part in climate change which, as Sir David Attenborough highlighted in his address at the beginning of COP24, is sending us spiralling towards the “collapse of civilisation and the natural world.”

Business leaders have the power to take action and avert climate chaos – and they can, by halving factories' resource use (energy, water and materials) by 2030. The reality, however, is that most factories don’t have the capacity, knowledge, or tools to manage the hundreds of small projects that add up to tangible change. This means that significant damage is being done to the planet while billions of dollars are wasted across the manufacturing industry every year. We can’t let this continue.

According to the University of Cambridge, best in class manufacturers are improving their resource efficiency by around 7% p.a. year on year, compared to the industry average of just 1%. We want to make best in class performance the norm – and with M2030 bee, we believe we can.

A simple, cloud-based software tool, M2030 bee helps manufacturing companies to manage their resource efficiency projects more easily. By using the bee, engineers can tap into the knowledge base they need to implement projects that add up to huge CO2 and cost reductions across their businesses.

Why 2030? Because we’ve aligned our mission with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to transform the world for the better by the year 2030. We want our product to be part of that journey.

What were you doing before you founded Manufacture 2030 and what inspired you to start it?

I founded Manufacture 2030’s parent company, 2degrees, over ten years ago, so have been working with businesses to improve their sustainability for many years.

2degrees has always been a pioneer of digital collaboration in sustainable manufacturing, and our speciality has become launching large-scale tech platforms - first for Tesco, then Asda, GSK, Co-op and Unilever. These multi-year programs involved thousands of manufacturers and food processors. Over time we built a deeper understanding of the issues affecting resource efficiency and sustainability in manufacturing, and this helped us to make connections across industries. We quickly realised, however, that the progress of our business was going to be too slow for the urgent challenges we need to address.

You’ve read the news… the need to act on climate change is now unquestionably urgent. The most recent report from the United Nations shows that we now only have 12 years left to reverse the damage we have done to the planet. In the past, announcements like this may have been taken with a pinch of salt – but not anymore.

People are becoming increasingly motivated; they want to get involved and take action, and we want to help them! The urgent need to act and the growing momentum to do so inspires us every day to work harder, find better solutions and get them into the hands of those who can use them to kick-start change. We want to help business leaders and their operational teams to act quickly, and with much greater confidence.

Why did you decide to launch a crowdfunding campaign?

Manufacture 2030 is on a mission to help manufacturing companies around the globe to halve their resource use by 2030. To achieve this, we need to think big and act at scale – so, the larger the crowd we have behind us, the more likely we are to achieve our mission. Simple!

Becoming a Manufacture 2030 investor means becoming a Champion of our brand. It means you believe in our mission and share our ambition to drive a ‘Resource Efficiency Revolution’. It means that you want to inspire others to join us by spreading the word to potential clients in your network. Support like this helps more and more people to hear about M2030 bee and drives momentum so that we can deliver positive results faster.

In return, we’re offering our crowdfunding investors a slice of Manufacture 2030. We’re offering the chance to help protect our irreplaceable planet for future generations. Now that’s worth investing in.

What has your business achieved to date?

Since the launch of Manufacture 2030, we have taken huge strides forwards, which is reflected in our world-class partners and clients – Mars Inc, Co-op, Johnson & Johnson and the US Department of Energy.

We started developing the M2030 bee software two years ago, drawing upon 2degrees’ many years of experience of working with manufacturing supply chains. Since then, we have invested heavily in product and market development, which has included alpha and beta trials of the software to ensure that our product is unique and fits market needs. We’ve also acquired specialist partners such as the US Department of Energy, Innovate UK and the University of Cambridge, who have provided invaluable support to content development.

We have also successfully built a management team and Board with a huge amount of sustainability and resource efficiency experience, manufacturing excellence, B2B software and the management of fast-growth SaaS start-ups. The result is a robust, dynamic team behind a tool that is intuitive, easy to use, and grounded in the knowledge of experts.

What’s next for Manufacture 2030?

We have identified a $1.2 billion market opportunity to help 850,000 factories (in the first instance) become more resource efficient. With the help of crowdfunding, we aim to implement a three-stage process to secure a major share of this global market and catalyse change across the industry. The three stages will be determined by the language capability of our software and how easy it is to sell it cost-effectively to small manufacturers.

Our initial launch was to English-speaking firms, but from 2021 we plan to target large manufacturers across all languages. At this point, we will also target smaller manufacturers, as we will have the customer self-service capability necessary to sell cost-effectively to smaller manufacturing sites at the lower subscription price.

Right now, we’re investing in sales and marketing to drive immediate growth – and alongside crowdfunding, we are building a strong new business pipeline, from which we hope to add more internationally recognised names to our client roster in the near future.

If you’d like to invest in Manufacture 2030, you can take a look at the pitch page today to find out more.

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