Beagle Aircraft - BCP Case Studies Series

“A net zero strategy can help our business to grow as it makes us a more attractive supplier to our customers. It can also save Beagle money as due to the rising cost of energy and dependency on fossil fuels, businesses are looking for alternatives.” - Malcolm Long 

In January we visited Beagle Aircraft to meet with Malcolm Long, the Company Chemist, and Paulina Mielech, the NPI Coordinator, to find out about their involvement in the BCP sponsored carbon reduction programme. Beagle Aircraft is a manufacturing organisation based in Christchurch. In 2022, the business made the decision to develop a net-zero policy. They found that they were seeing an increased demand from their customers regarding information on their environmental monitoring and carbon reduction. Certain customers are only buying from manufacturing organisations with ISO 14001 accreditations and net-zero policies, with a large emphasis on energy and emissions reduction. This means that for Beagle Aircraft, net zero and carbon reduction isn’t just a ‘nice to have’, it is integral to their business model and company ethos.

Beagle Aircraft signed up to Climate Essentials as part of BCP Council’s programme in July 2022. Malcolm Long  attended an onboarding session and received a login to get going using the software. He then worked with his colleague, Paulina, to populate Climate Essentials with relevant data from 2021 and 2022 in order to understand the company's total emissions, broken down across scopes for these two years. Beagle Aircraft now have the information needed to complete environmental questionnaires requested by their customers. 

For Beagle Aircraft, looking at their carbon emissions was a matter of retaining business, and Paulina explained how if she was to do all of this environmental monitoring without the support of the Climate Essentials tool it would have taken her months to do. However, once Paulina had collated the information required for Climate Essentials she described the process as, “ just a couple of clicks… and it does it for you” to find out what their total emissions are, and to identify carbon hotspots. 

Beagle Aircraft have been working hard on reducing their carbon emissions through simple steps with big impacts, such as switching to a renewable energy provider. When we visited in January, Malcolm had plans to install motion sensor LED lights across the whole site which has now been approved. They have also been working with a local company offering energy savings solutions, to monitor their energy and electricity efficiency. Beagle Aircraft are also increasing their employee engagement through education efforts around the environmental benefits of each individual employee's actions. 

When asked about what advice they would give other BCP businesses looking to measure their carbon emissions, Malcolm and Paulina said that it is best to just get started. “It’s easier than it looks once you know where the majority of your emissions are coming from. Tools like the Climate Essentials portal help to understand your company background much better.” - Malcolm Long 

Sign up to access one of the limited licences to Climate Essentials now by clicking this link here. 
LINK: https://climax.community/bcp-climate-essentials-access/

*Sponsored by BCP Council. Eligibility Criteria: you must be based in BCP, have fewer than 250 employees and fewer than 7 sites.