Interview with Gordon Macrae about Gripple Limited's Carbon Footprint.

Gordon Macrae is the Special Projects Manager at Gripple Ltd., an international supplier of wire joining and tensioning systems based at The Old West Gun Works building in Sheffield.

In his interview with 'Future Works' in Feb 2015, Gordon spoke about his role in the company, including managing Gripple's carbon footprint and building infrastructure. Projects like 'Energy Champions' and 'Temperature Zones' are just a couple of ways in which this world-leading business have managed to conserve energy.

Interview Transcript - Key

I: = Interviewer

G: = Gordon Macrae

[time e.g. 5:22] = inaudible word at this time

[IA 5:22] = inaudible section at this time

[word] = best guess at word

… = interruption in sentence, trailing off or short pause

G: I’m Gordon Macrae, I’m the Special Projects Manager at Gripple. Amongst other things I’m responsible for carbon foot printing here and the infrastructure of all of our buildings.

I: Could you start by telling us a short version of the story of Gripple?

G: Gripple was founded 25 years’ ago, our Chairman was a wire salesman and was in a field in Wales when a farmer challenged him to come up with a better way of joining and tensioning wire and that was the start of a really exciting journey. Gripple has actually sold over 500 million Gripples into over 80 countries and over 85% of our turnover is actually exported. Now it’s not just in agriculture that we effectively operate, we’ve got a really strong, global industrial business and amongst the product groups that we’re involved with is the suspension of lighting, heating and ventilation systems. And the thing that’s really exciting is that we’ve got some really great plans where we believe that we can double the size of the business over the next five years.

I: So could you tell me a bit about how energy is depicted in this kind of story, and past, present and future?

G: Energy is a really interesting subject for Gripple. We didn’t start out as being swampies, but actually the environment and sustainability have become really key issues. I think the first issue to probably mention is that we love manufacturing in old buildings and the challenge that you have in manufacturing in old buildings is that they’re built with an eighteenth century, nineteenth century infrastructure, which means that in terms of energy they’re quite challenging. But I think what we’ve basically tried to do is to put very much a modern take on all of our buildings, to invest in them and to make sure that we optimise the environmental energy performance of all of the buildings. So what we’ve actually got is a combination of history and technology coming together to create some very interesting and innovative spaces.

I: I noticed in your reception that you had [3:11] a 10% reduction of energy in relation to credits year-on-year from 2013?

G: One of the things that’s really important for us is that we focus very much on improving the performance of the business and one of the key elements in that is actually energy. One of the things we’re very proud of is that we’ve grown our turnover significantly more than our consumption of energy and the sort of things that we’re involved with there are in the first instance getting people involved, so we have energy champions in each of our businesses and they’re responsible for doing the simple things, like making sure the lights are turned off. But it’s much more than that, when we design a machine, we look at how we can optimise both the manufacturing and the environmental performance of that machine, so all of the machines today have cut-out bulbs, which means if they’re not being used for a particular period of time, the machine will switch off.

So again, there’s a constant rolling programme every year of getting energy reductions. We’ve done probably all of the sort of things that we can sensibly do within the infrastructure that we’ve got, we’ve done LED lights, LED lights have a very short payback period and we’re going to do the final element of that this year. The real challenge is in heating and we have a huge barn here of a building that’s really challenging to heat, we have staff that have a range of temperature requirements from freezing to boiling and to try and accommodate that what we’ve actually done is set up temperature zones where we can accommodate it, but I guess I’m off the opinion that ultimately for the person that complains it’s too cold, we’re probably going to have issue Gripple duffle coats or sleeping bags, but it’s always one of the jokes in this particular business.

But again, we’ve always when we’ve done a new building, invested in practical development, so we’ve got solar power on one of our buildings, which does the central heating boiler. We’ve looked at micro, hydro generation of electricity on the [6:15 fifth wheel of the Dom] and that’s still a live project, in fact with Sheffield Hallam there was a project last year where they were looking at the viability of it, so that’s something that we’re interested in. And we’ve done some really innovative stuff. When we started Loadhog, the supply chain business, one of the key elements in the injection moulding process was basically the cooling of the machines. Traditionally you use high-energy coolers which are energy inefficient and actually look horrible. We took a different approach, we took water in and the occasional fish from the River Derwent and used that effectively to cool the chillers, so again by thinking out of the box and innovatively, you can do some really interesting stuff.

I: So what role do you think being an employee-owned company has in terms of the way you approach these things?

G: I think the way that we look at employee ownership is that the values that are important to you as an individual are transferrable into business, so in this particular business when we recruit people, we’re not fundamentally interested in skills, what we’re actually more interested in is the values of the business. And those values include a commitment to sustainability, they include a commitment to excellence and they include a commitment to helping each other, so what we’re really looking for there is long-term sustainability. And at a very simple level, an individual we expect if they see some lights that are left on or a machine running, to switch it off. On a broader basis, if they see something that’s fundamentally wrong, we empower them to actually fix it there and then, so if there’s a health and safety issue we don’t have a committee, that individual is empowered to come and talk to me or to the Chairman or Managing Director and say, ‘Here’s a problem, it needs fixing,’ and we’ll do it straightaway. So what you get there is a really great commitment to doing things that in some other businesses probably would need a committee or a management decision to get some action taken.

I: So last time we met you were talking quite a bit about how the Carbon Trust came to do an energy audit and you are saying to them- rather than just talking about the building you are in- these four walls, and calculating within that, that you want to think about the whole manufacturing process and the impact of products, I wondered if you could just speak a bit about that?

G: One of the things that we recognised probably about seven or eight years’ ago was that we have an environmental impact and where it started from was having the Carbon Trust coming in and actually doing an energy audit and they said, ‘Your carbon footprint is great, you’re only using 500 tons of carbon.’ And I thought about that and said, ‘That’s rubbish!’ because if you look at the amount of carbon that we’re using up and down the supply chain, it’s significantly more than that. So we got a university student and we did an exercise into carbon mapping up and down the supply chain that was very much ahead of its time and that was really interesting; we were not using 500 tons of carbon, actually the total was close on 6,500, of that 4,500 effectively comes from the manufacturing process, but 4,000 tons of that comes from upstream manufacturing, zinc and polymers. So again that was a real eye opener for us.

And then in terms of energy if you take a broader view, because we’re a global business what that means is that there’s probably 2,000 tons’ worth of carbon that’s actually being used either transporting raw materials into the business or transporting out to our customers. And the lesson that we’ve learnt there is that we need to focus on that both in terms of the cost, but by going with suppliers that effectively are focussed on doing it in on an environmentally friendly basis and the two can actually work. So we’ve got a really good take on where we’re consuming carbon and energy right across our supply chain and interestingly when we did the exercise there was a great focus coming in, certainly in the UK construction industry, into being carbon neutral and we started looking at the impact that our products potentially were having on the environment as well. And what’s really interesting is that if we convert a traditional customer from the use of threaded rod for suspending lighting or ventilation and convert them to a Gripple, the embodied carbon is only 5% of what we use, because our method is effectively using very thin steel and wire rope, so there’s a huge benefit. So actually if we convert 10% of our sales every year in first-time customers, I can make a very strong case that we’re carbon neutral.

But it doesn’t simply stop there, because the thing that’s really important to us is a process of continuous improvement and innovation and what we’ve certainly done with our agricultural Gripple is that we’re onto the fifth iteration of the product. The latest iteration of that product uses 25% less material and using computer aided design you optimise the strength in the product and what that gives you is ultimately a product that uses less energy in its manufacturing and that is really great. When we then look at the other things that we’re doing, we’re looking at improving the capabilities and the performance of all of our machines and we never build the same machine, if we build a machine a second time it’s got to be 15 or 20% better and part of that is the environmental performance. So in a business like this energy is really important and it’s not something that’s simply a cost in the business, but by focussing on it we can turn it on its head and make it something that we can sell. But if you’re to be truthful about it you can’t make that message or put that message across unless you’re walking the talk and actually doing it.

I: I just wondered as well, did you influence the Carbon Trust in terms of how they calculate things at all?

G: That’s a really interesting thing, because when we talked to them and they looked at the way we were calculating it, basically they thought we were completely barking, bonkers, because it wasn’t aggressive in terms of what we were doing, in fact I would probably argue we fundamentally understated, but they find it very difficult to quantify the benefits. What they’re much more focussed on is simply capturing that base data and then to go one stage further, the way that we did, was really difficult. And one of the things that we’ve got on the agenda for this year is to try and find an awarding body that will actually come up with a methodology that does demonstrate the really good stuff that we’re doing with the environmental supply chain.

I: And in terms of influence on other people in your supply chain, do you have these kind of conversations with them?

G: What’s really important for us is that we have a long-term sustainable supply chain, so one of the things that we’re actively involved with all the time is putting on our best practice into our supply chain, so the things that we learn we share. But what’s also really encouraging is that not necessarily through our own volition, but if we look at where we have some influence, we consume 1,200 tons of zinc every year, we effectively purchase that in the UK and working with the supplier that we are, we’re chasing for an efficient system, he’s recognised that the way that he’s competitive is by investing in state-of-the-art furnaces and efficient energy, because that’s his biggest cost. So again I think what you’re seeing there is an alignment of the requirements of upstream and downstream in the manufacturing process that benefits everybody.

I: I was going to ask you what you would [16:49] at the moment, but everything it sounds like, this thinking goes through everything that you’re doing about energy, so I’ll move onto the next question, which is how do you envisage your own work and [17:01] in manufacturing changing in 5, 10, 20 years and what will be different in the world you’re operating in?

G: I think we’re doing lots of really good stuff, I think our long-term objective is to have an energy source that we derive ourselves, so it will be completely renewable. Now where will that come from? It will come from possibly using on the riverside factory some micro hydro; we’re working on a project because we think it’s got a huge amount of opportunity called Woosh where we’re developing a wind turbine system that is designed for manufacturing units, to make them sustainable, so effectively in time what we would like to think is that by investing in technology we have a free source of energy that is not dependent on the grid. Now that’s really challenging and it will require some investment, but I think if we’re to remain competitive as a nation, that’s the sort of forward-thinking that we need to be doing. There are some interesting challenges also, what we’re actually seeing in manufacturing is new materials are effectively coming on stream all the time, they have a different manufacturing energy profile to what we’re doing. We’re just embarking on metal injection moulding which is a new process, very few companies actually do it in the UK, but we believe that that’s potentially a product of the future. Composites again is something that may well come through. Now I think possibly some of those individual products ultimately over a period of time will require less energy, but as you go through that learning curve and that implementation the chances are that you might end up at the start consuming more energy and that’s something that we’re not particularly comfortable doing, but you’ve got to actually grow and you’ve got to develop.
Again I think if you look at the long-term future of manufacturing and businesses like this, it’s a really interesting one, because we make metal products, but if you were to ask me what ultimately an agricultural Gripple might look like, the answer is it may not be a manufactured product, because if you think of a fence and its function, the function of a fence is to keep animals in or to keep animals out, therefore you could envisage basically a beam technology in 30-50 years’ time. Now because we’re the market leader, to some extent we can drive the way that the market goes, so what I’d like to think is that we will still be the market leader, but it might be actually producing a completely different product to solve that particular problem. So I don’t think there’s today a huge amount of certainty in terms of what the product will look like or the materials, but unless you’re committed to working in those sort of fields, you’re not going to guarantee that you’re going to have a great business going forward. And even again if you look at some of the really interesting stuff that’s going on in lighting, we did a KTP with Sheffield two years’ ago, where effectively we developed a prototype which demonstrates the wireless transmission of power, so if you think of a house or a building that today a large chunk of that is tied up in wiring, in 10-20 years’ time, no it won’t, all of the power in it will effectively be generated through base stations, beaming power to the next router or to the next light.

I: And then what changes do you anticipate, if any, in the wider climate change picture and how that might impact [22:11] you?

G: I think the thing that perhaps disappoints me on climate change and the debate is that we’re still arguing about whether it has an impact or not and that’s to me still fundamentally disappointing. I think the really important thing is that we get out there and we basically educate people that excessive use of energy is a problem and it’s using scarce resources, so I think the thing that’s really important is an education programme and that we get people really focussed on a values basis. Now one of our interesting, pet hobby horses is feed-in tariffs, we don’t believe there should be feed-in tariffs, because they’ve stalled the market and you see it with things like solar where the government makes an announcement, and everybody piles into solar whilst the feed-in tariffs are there and then as they fade out, it dies. What’s really important is that innovative companies develop solutions that people can invest in on a normal pay back basis and traditionally environmental energy projects have had up to 10 or 15 year payback rates, which is fundamentally unacceptable. But it’s really interesting, I think, we look at the Woosh Project and what we’re saying there is this thing has to pay back in 18 months to 36 months without feed-in tariffs, so again by focussing on creating technological solutions I think you can then demonstrate to people that there is a better way and that we can go a long way to I’m not saying reverse the decline in the climate, but certainly to mitigate the impact of a growing global economy.

I: So I think I probably can guess, but are you more of an optimist or a pessimist [laughs] when it comes to the next few decades of energy and climate change?

G: I guess I’m fundamentally an optimist, I think we all have on a personal basis an ability to make a difference in a small way. I think you need a number of exemplars that get it and that really drive people to do it and almost in a strange sort of way, probably the worst thing you can actually ever have is a government getting behind it, because if we’re honest, very few people have a huge amount of confidence in governments today, but if effectively you do it on an individual basis with the movement of companies actually demonstrating that you can achieve things, then I think there’s a groundswell of opinion and evidence that make it really easy to focus on reversing that trend.

I: And finally do you have a question that you’d like to ask a person or institution and what we are going to try and do is actually try and get these questions to people, if possible, but they could be somebody in the past that we can’t do, but about energy and climate change, so what would it be?

G: I suppose it would be for each of the energy sources that currently exist how do we make a step change in their performance, so what are the technologies that are fundamentally going to move solar wind and hydro forward, not on an incremental basis, but what potentially with all of these great brains that we’ve got in Sheffield, what technologies can we bring to bear that will fundamentally change the performance of each of those individual opportunities?

I: And so was that question to general people at large?

G: I think that question is almost to the engineering teams at Sheffield, how do we actually make that step change, what are the technologies that will enable us to do it?

I: Thank you.

[End of Interview]