Plastics Manufacturing
Plastics production is highly energy-intensive, from extrusion and injection moulding to compounding and recycling. With rising energy prices, complex compliance demands, and growing pressure to decarbonise, manufacturers must find ways to protect margins while meeting ambitious Net Zero targets.
Businesswise Solutions partners with medium and large plastics manufacturers to optimise energy use, reduce costs, and support long-term sustainability goals without disrupting production.
80% of manufacturing firms are seeing commercial benefits from implementing environmentally responsible programmes, and 37% of firms said they had achieved reduced operational costs.
Insight from Benchmarking Sustainability – Barclays.
33% reduction in CO2 emissions since 1990
This progress reflects significant strides in energy efficiency and emissions management within the industry.
Green energy procurement and bureau services
With high consumption and thin operating margins, plastics manufacturers are particularly vulnerable to energy market volatility. Securing the right procurement strategy is essential to stabilise costs and remain competitive.
Our energy traders design tailored procurement plans that balance risk and opportunity, while our bureau services ensure your contracts and invoices are tightly managed. This means you stay protected, compliant, and confident in your energy spend.
We secured wholesale market rates for a plastics manufacturer that delivered £100,000 in initial savings. By extending their contract and applying our trading strategy, they’re now on track to save a further £240,000 over the contract term.
Scalable energy management
Energy is one of the biggest costs in plastics manufacturing, with extrusion lines, injection moulding machines, and compressors driving heavy demand. Small inefficiencies across production can quickly escalate into significant waste and higher bills.
Our Energy Management as a Service (EMaaS) provides real-time monitoring and detailed analysis, helping you identify waste, track machine-level performance, and optimise energy demand across sites. This allows manufacturers to cut costs, boost efficiency, and reduce emissions without disrupting production schedules.
Installing 36 Energy Insight sensors across the site of one plastic product manufacturer allowed us to monitor and analyse their energy use down to zone and machine level. With this level of data, we identified over £100,000 in potential energy savings – which is more than 10% of the company’s total energy spend.
Supporting plastic manufacturers with energy and carbon compliance
The plastics industry faces growing regulatory and stakeholder scrutiny around energy use and carbon reporting. Compliance with government schemes isn’t just about avoiding penalties — it’s about unlocking reliefs, reducing costs, and strengthening sustainability credentials.
Our compliance specialists ensure reporting is accurate, timely, and fully audit-ready. We help plastics manufacturers secure exemptions and reliefs that protect profitability while meeting evolving Net Zero expectations.
Our compliance team are experts in:
- SECR
- CCA / CCL
- ESOS
- ESG policy
- Energy Intensive Relief
For one plastics manfuacturer, we were able to secure a valuable carbon tax exemption which has helped to save the manufacturer nearly £250,000 per year. We’ve also taken on their ongoing exemption management so we can continue to find carbon tax exemptions.