Unsworth becomes a sustainability leader by adding emissions measurement to its Pathway app
Greg Herz, Content Lead
With 50 years of experience and having handled well over 1 million shipments, Unsworth is one of the UK’s leading freight forwarders. In recent years, it has been pushing boundaries with its innovative Pathway app.
Having already saved clients over 12,000 hours of data input, Pathway is providing value for clients and delivering Unsworth’s aim of focusing on technological innovation, collaboration and trust.
With climate change at the forefront of so many shippers’ minds, the logical next step for Pathway would be to offer clients emissions measurement and mitigation to help manage and reduce their environmental impact.
In this case study, we explore how Unsworth enhanced its Pathway app by integrating Pledge’s emissions measurement platform.
Challenge: Maintaining a seamless user experience while enhancing emissions measurement capabilities
Unsworth faced a challenge: How do you provide an integrated emissions measurement service without sacrificing the seamless experience that clients have come to expect from the Pathway app?
The team looked into building emissions measurement capabilities directly into the Pathway app, but the cost, internal resources and time it would take to implement this meant the project wasn't feasible from a business perspective.
They needed a solution that provided clients with accredited emissions measurements while retaining the seamless experience they had come to expect from the Pathway app — without the significant cost, resources and time required for an in-house solution.
“We looked into what building high-quality emissions measurement and reporting capabilities into our Pathway app would entail and found that it’s much more complex than we realised — it just wasn’t a commercially viable option for us if we wanted to achieve the standards required to be an industry leader in sustainable freight.”
James Coombs, Head of Innovation, Unsworth.
Solution: Pledge seamlessly integrates with the Pathway app using AWS Cloud-based file upload
When looking at available solutions, Unsworth found that Pledge stood out from other available tools. Pledge’s platform is specifically built for freight forwarders. It enables the seamless integration of high-quality emissions measurement and reporting into freight management systems, with the option to integrate via API or AWS S3 bulk file import/export.
Unsworth integrated using AWS S3 bulk file import/export, enabling server-to-server file exchange capabilities that allow the exchange of files with Pledge via Amazon S3 to support automated end-to-end workflows. Using this mechanism, Unsworth offered its clients:
A seamless scope 3 emissions measurement and reporting experience as standard in the Pathway app.
A clear, concise and comprehensive overview of multi-modal emissions data and container utilisation.
GLEC-accredited and ISO-aligned emissions calculations.
Clarity™, enabling a full breakdown of the methodologies and assumptions used in emissions calculations.
The ability to measure historical shipment emissions
“When we discovered Pledge, we were really impressed with the level of detail and data utilisation their platform enabled. It means we can provide our clients with much more than just high-level emissions measurement — we can actually educate them on how to lower their supply chain carbon footprint, enabling us to deliver real, tangible value to shippers who want to reduce their scope 3 emissions."
James Coombs, Head of Innovation, Unsworth.
Outcome: Unsworth is a leader in sustainable freight with its Pathway app
After integrating Pledge into its Pathway app, Unsworth has placed carbon accounting front and centre of its business strategy, strengthening its endeavour towards delivering sustainable freight solutions.
Despite only integrating in July 2023 Unsworth has already seen significant results:
Over 500 users have accessed emissions shipment reporting via Pathway
In total, Unsworth clients have already measured over 5200 tons of CO2e.
“The impact of integrating Pledge with our platform has been instant, and the feedback we’ve got from clients has been overwhelmingly positive. This is the first step in becoming a sustainable partner for our customers.”
James Coombs, Head of Innovation, Unsworth.
Summary: Unsworth anticipates long-term growth and strengthened customer loyalty
By integrating Pledge’s emissions measurement solution into its Pathway app, Unsworth has underscored that sustainability is not just a buzzword, but an integral part of its services.