DRIVING TOWARDS NET ZERO ACROSS ITS UK VEHICLE FLEET

WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

Delivering a nationwide sustainable-fleet programme is a huge undertaking at the best of times, but doing so in the teeth of seemingly neverending automotive supply chain issues makes the challenge even more daunting.

To stay on course with sustainability targets, despite such difficulties, would be beyond some businesses, but this is exactly what the multinational security company G4S has achieved.

G4S is part of Allied Universal and is a security and facility services company providing integrated security solutions that allow clients to focus on their core business.

Globally, G4S spends over a billion dollars a year with suppliers and subcontractors, and overseeing all of this is Chief Procurement Officer Jon Willescroft, who manages 150 procurement people across the globe

A key area for Willescroft and his team right now is sustainability.

“Sustainability is a broad subject,” he says, “and you have to prioritise. I have top-down support from the executive committee, who align the procurement sustainability objectives with the corporate ones.”

In this way, the areas Willescroft agrees upon with the executive committee “become our absolute focus”.

G4S is taking big strides in its global 2050 net-zero commitment, and procurement is at the heart of the eco-driving programme.

Jon Willescroft, Chief Procurement Officer, G4S

At present, in the United Kingdom and Ireland (UK&I), an important focus of sustainability efforts centre around the decarbonisation of the company’s vehicle fleet. Willescroft says: “We’ve made great progress in the last year with our fleet decarbonisation. More than three-quarters of our new vehicle orders have been lowemission vehicles.”

G4S’ renewal programme around its vehicle fleet is ambitious. To help it decarbonise its car and light-commercial vehicle fleet, it turned in 2021 to global fleet leasing company LeasePlan, which is helping G4S UK&I decarbonise its fleet, while also working with it on using technology to drive cost savings.

Globally, G4S has about 15,000 vehicles. These include motorcycles and passenger cars, commercial vehicles and heavyarmoured vehicles for the cash business. It has around 2,500 in the UK and Ireland, of which roughly 1,600 are cars and commercial vehicles, and it is these vehicles LeasePlan and G4S are initially prioritising to make carbon neutral.

Under targets set out in its Road to Zero strategy, G4S aims to have all its passenger cars zero carbon by 2030, followed by light commercial vehicles in 2035 and its entire fleet by 2040. It is also making use of telematics and fleet management tools to optimise operations and improve safety.

But in the face of ongoing supply chain issues in the automotive industry – caused by the global shortage of microchips – progress has been far from straightforward; G4S has been unable to freely move employees into more carbonfriendly vehicles as quickly as it would like, because the supply has not been there.

Most of the company’s operational fleet is low- to mid-range vehicles but, on the company car side, it also uses mid-range to premium vehicles.

“I don't think there's been a single car manufacturer that has escaped supply chain issues and labour shortages,” says Willescroft. “We're regularly facing a 12-month lead time on new vehicles.”

“With crisis after crisis hitting the automotive industry, we could easily have been blown off course in terms of timelines. If we had allowed chip shortages and supply chain disruption to impact us fully then this would have put us back by a year or two. It's a change programme. You're trying to push people and create momentum, and momentum is stopped in its tracks if you are waiting 12 to 15 months for a vehicle. But we've managed to keep on track with our targets.”

Jon Willescroft

TITLE: CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER

INDUSTRY: SECURITY

LOCATION: LONDON UK

Jon Willescroft is an ambitious, energetic and commercial CPO, specialising in reshaping procurement in large, complex organisations. Jon currently leads procurement at G4S, part of the world’s largest security company, encompassing 150 people across 90 countries, and over $1bn spend. His focus at G4S is driving sustainable, commercial transformation across this complex global business and its supply chains. Prior to G4S, Jon held a number of procurement leadership positions in financial services and pharmaceuticals, as well as procurement advisory roles.