World’s first one-stop sustainability platform launches in Manchester to help UK Businesses reach Net Zero by 2030

Initial 30 Manchester businesses sign up to begin carbon reduction journey 

A new sustainability platform, Zellar, has launched in Manchester (Tuesday September 21st) with an event at Stock Exchange hotel.

The Zellar platform has been created and launched to enable every small UK business to reach Net Zero by 2030, well ahead of government targets. As a well-known ‘city of firsts’, Manchester was chosen to pilot the platform with 30 businesses across the city given free licences and guided through an onboarding process to begin their Net Zero journey.

Manchester’s early adopters comprise a cross-section of businesses and sectors including: Gary Neville’s GG Hospitality (Hotel Football and The Stock Exchange Hotel); Menagerie Restaurant; finance company Sedulo; The Lowry Hotel; The Co-op Live arena; property consultancy OBI; tech platform Open Money; popular Northern Quarter bar Common and Rochdale-based manufacturer Crystal Doors.

To celebrate the launch in Manchester, Zellar brought together a number of key businesses and influencers at an exclusive event to discuss sustainability, including the importance of Zellar’s mission, the impact the platform has made on Manchester businesses to date and the challenge for businesses in becoming truly sustainable over the long term.

Hosted by Chris Brindley MBE, Chair of Zellar, the event featured commentary from Green tech entrepreneur and director of The Blair Project Dr Marliyn Comrie, Stewart Davies of GG Hospitality plus representatives from Co-op LIVE, the UK’s first purpose-driven arena (another national first for Manchester).

Discussions also featured like-minded partners that provide products and services SMEs need to become Net Zero before 2030. These included CCP, Co-operative Bank, Renault Mobilize, Onto, SSE, Tatton Estates and Biffa.

Small and medium-sized enterprises make up 99.9% of all UK businesses and employ 60% of the workforce. Yet, 78% don’t know where to start to become more sustainable.* Whether businesses are just getting started or want more ways to improve, Zellar can help benchmark their sustainability and provide a customised roadmap.

Zellar’s one-stop solution provides everything businesses need to get to Net Zero, in one easy-to-use platform.

Gary Styles, Zellar’s CEO and founder, said: “It’s incredibly exciting and rather fitting to be starting our journey in Manchester with a brilliant set of receptive and conscientious businesses. Manchester is known for stealing a march and its sustainability ambitions align perfectly with Zellar’s, so this feels like the perfect place to launch our platform.”

Zellar makes sustainability an accessible and affordable reality for small businesses across the UK, offering a range of services from local biodiversity projects, to options for adopting green technology or energy.

The platform brings together all the services SMEs – from sole traders to medium sized organisations – need to benchmark, manage, offset and promote during their sustainability journey. Zellar provides the most efficient pathway to Net Zero, and costs from just £125 per year on a subscription basis, although it is available for free to charities.

Stewart Davies, COO of GG Hospitality, owners of the Stock Exchange Hotel and Hotel Football which has a Zellar profile, said: supporting the launch, said:“Over the years I’ve become increasingly aware of how I can take steps to become more sustainable and this is really important for our management of the Stock Exchange Hotel. We used Zellar to analyse our carbon emissions and discovered they are 44% better than the average UK hotel. The platform also provided a series of actions we can take to improve this further, including behavioural actions, emission reductions by moving to a low carbon energy supplier, use of green technology, offsetting and biodiversity investments. We’re excited about our next steps towards becoming a greener hotel and are committed to reaching Net Zero before 2030.”

Gary Styles added: “Like many parents, I worry about my children’s future in the face of the climate crisis. There’s plenty of talk but not enough action, so I created Zellar to help businesses make real changes internally through reducing emissions, volunteering, behavioural change, contributing to biodiversity projects and carbon offsetting. We’ve already helped over 50 early-access businesses significantly improve their sustainability processes and we’re excited to reach thousands more companies across the UK.”

Peter Charlesworth, Zellar’s COO, said: “We understand that businesses face many challenges in trying to reach Net Zero, and it’s not always easy to know where to start. That’s why we created Zellar. Until now, smaller companies would have had to rely on several different consultants, brokers and apps, which is time consuming and doesn’t guarantee success. Helping smaller businesses will make a huge difference in our national efforts to reach net zero.”

Zellar has been in development for two years and 30 Manchester-based businesses have benefitted from early access, with the platform now available to businesses across the UK. For more information and to sign up, visit: https://zellar.com/