Having seen the problem first-hand during his two-decade stint in the paper industry, Ben Findlay wanted to explore how to recirculate surplus and unseen industrial spare parts in a sustainable way that could be monetised via an e-commerce platform. “The scale of the challenge is vast. Doesn’t matter if you measure it in pounds, euros or dollars. It’s billions.” More specifically, “we know that any mid-sized manufacturing site – regardless of sector – is usually carrying around €250,000 worth of spare parts that they can’t use and are still in the original box. There’s this culture in engineering that ‘stock is good’. But it’s a waste too. We also know that they scrap around €100,000 of these per year, per site, to make space for new parts coming in. Our job is to try to make sure that surplus parts don’t end up as landfill and recirculate them. There’s a use for them. They’re parts, and parts are useful.”
While “industry has done a good job focusing...