- 1Six months from end to end, from the first customer call to the final presentation to the executive committee.
- 2Material purchases account for 52% of the footprint, an unexpected hotspot for an industrial SME.
- 33 quick, low-cost actions are started in under 6 months.
- 4The customer renews the contract, citing Bilan Carbone® as a decisive criterion.
This company is an industrial SME with 180 employees in the south of France, manufacturing metal components for the automotive and aerospace industries. We will not name it (client confidentiality), but its journey is so representative of what we see in industrial SMEs that it is worth telling in detail.
The trigger was a call from the quality, safety and environment manager. A major customer had just introduced environmental criteria in its tender, and without carbon data, the company risked losing the contract. This is the most common trigger we encounter. Not the director's environmental convictions (although they often exist in the background). Not regulation (which always arrives a little late). A customer asking the question. It is pragmatic, it is not very romantic, but it gets things moving.
1Months 1-2: material purchases account for 52% of the footprint, which nobody expected
Bilan Carbone® scopes 1-2-3 using the Bilan Carbone® methodology. Data collection took 4 weeks, with around 3 working days in total on the client's side, shared between the quality, safety and environment manager, the CFO and the logistics manager. Scope 1-2 data (energy bills, refrigerants) were quickly available. Scope 3 required more work: extracting and cleaning purchasing data from the accounts, a short employee mobility survey (a response rate of 65%, which is reasonable), and freight data obtained from the main carrier.
The result: 8,200 tonnes of CO2e per year. Breakdown: raw material purchases 52%, site energy 18%, freight 12%, travel 8%, capital goods 6%, other 4%. The surprise, as almost always in industry: steel and aluminium purchases alone represented 45% of the total footprint. The quality, safety and environment manager expected energy to be the largest source. It is only second, and a distant second. This is a moment we experience at every presentation in an industrial SME, and it is always just as striking.
2Month 3: the executive committee discovers 3 quick, low-cost actions
When purchases come top of the footprint
Timeline of an industrial SME assessment
6 months from the assessment to the first measurable results
On the day of the presentation to the executive committee, purchases come top of the footprint. This is often a surprise: directors think of energy and travel, rather than raw material purchases. Yet this is where industrial emissions are concentrated.
3 quick, low-cost actions
The executive committee saw the results. What followed was that 3 quick, inexpensive ways to reduce emissions emerged from the analysis.
The footprint factsheet: an unexpected selling point
Quick wins identified: replacing the lighting in the main workshop with LEDs (an investment of a few thousand euros, paid back in one to two years, reducing scope 2 by 2%), optimising freight by consolidating shipments (negotiation with the carrier, no investment, reducing freight emissions by 8%), introducing the sustainable mobility allowance for employees (a marginal HR cost, a strong internal signal), and producing a one-page product footprint factsheet for customers.
Structural actions: opening a dialogue with suppliers on low-carbon steel (the largest source in the footprint, but a long-term measure because alternatives exist but cost 10 to 30% more), an opportunity assessment for a heat pump to heat the workshops, and gradually incorporating carbon criteria into purchasing policy.
The plan was presented to the executive committee with the footprint figures and the quick wins already identified. Concrete actions change everything: when a director sees that they can act immediately with inexpensive measures, the topic moves from a 'CSR constraint' to a 'management tool'.
When the CFO discovers that purchases account for 52% of the footprint, they often become the action plan's first ally: these are management tools they understand.
3Months 4-6: the customer renews the contract, citing Bilan Carbone® as a decisive criterion
The lighting was replaced in 3 weeks. Freight consolidation was negotiated with the carrier. The sustainable mobility allowance was introduced. Three concrete, visible actions, in less than 3 months. The tonnes of CO2 avoided are not spectacular, but the effect on internal credibility is enormous: climate moved from "a quality, safety and environment project" to "a company project".
The product footprint factsheet, a one-page document summarising the carbon footprint of a finished product, proved to be a powerful commercial tool. Included in tender responses, it gives a concrete advantage over competitors who do not have this data.
Dialogue with steel suppliers moves more slowly, which is normal. Low-carbon alternatives exist (recycled steel, hydrogen-produced steel), but they are more expensive and not always available in the required quantities. Work is ongoing, measured in quarters rather than weeks, and this is the kind of project that requires persistence. We will not pretend it is easy.
