Skip to content

Agenda: Stay competitive during instability.

The people, technologies and ideas helping do more with less.

Discussion leaders 

German Faroini
Maggie Short
Elodin Jupin
Armna Iqbal
Nick Purshouse - IES
Emma Fromberg
Adam Goves - IES
   
10:00 Welcome
10:10

Keynote - Circularity when the economics don't add up: How BIC made circularity work for the pocket lighter
Elodie Jupin, Circular Economy Director - BIC 

Understand what makes circularity viable for low-value products. See how BIC's in-depth knowledge of its own materials and assembly makes disassembly and reuse workable when there's almost no residual value to recover.
Learn how to design a collection system without a surplus to fund it. Explore how BIC's scheduled pickup network through tobacconists works, and the role relationships and existing retail touchpoints play in keeping costs down.
Assess which governance model could scale circularity in your own value chain. Take away the King's College London framework for moving from a single-producer scheme to shared or collective models, and what each one demands of partners.
10:30 Table rotations 1 and 2 - See explainers below
11:40 Networking break, both rooms together
12:10

Keynote - Hidden in Plain Sight: Finding Savings Where Others Aren't Looking
Nick Purshouse, Business Development Manager - IES 

Where are the biggest hidden opportunities for energy, operational, and cost savings across industrial facilities that are often overlooked?
How can building performance modelling and operational data be used together to uncover inefficiencies before they impact performance and profitability?
What steps can organisations take to identify, prioritise, and act on high-value improvement opportunities with confidence?
12:30 Table rotation 3 -  See explainers below
13:00 Networking lunch, both rooms together
14:00

Keynote - Lessons from Living Systems
Emma Fromberg, Fellow - Kings College for Sustainable Business 

How ecological thinking can help businesses rethink circularity and design more resilient, regenerative value chains.
14:20 Panel debate - The Cost of Fragility - Where  Resilience Breaks Down and What to Fix First 

Senior leaders examine where hidden dependencies, weak visibility and constrained capacity create risk, and which interventions should take priority.
14:40 Joining the Dots: What We Learned Today?
An informal closing session that brings the day’s roundtable conversations together, connecting themes across tables and turning them into practical actions you can take back to work tomorrow.
16:00 Close


 Discussion Tables

(Please click to read the full description)

Round Table 1 - Building confidence in data used for decision-making and AI ambitions
 Discussion points:
  • What data foundations need to be fixed before AI can deliver meaningful value and enable decisions?
    • How can organisations improve confidence in data without creating additional governance and bureaucracy?
    • What practical steps have the greatest impact on data quality and consistency?

Speaker images-Jun-23-2026-12-39-34-4955-PM

German Faraoni 

Round Table 2 - Supplier engagement - Should we keep using the carrot, or is it time for the stick?

Discussion points:

  • How can manufacturers avoid supplier engagement becoming a reporting exercise rather than a route to measurable emissions reduction?
     
  • When does supplier engagement need to move from encouragement and collaboration to clearer expectations, consequences and commercial pressure?
     
  • How can procurement teams identify the “sweet spot” where carbon reduction, cost reduction, resilience and risk management all align?

4-Jun-09-2026-01-50-18-4435-PM
Maggie Short 
Speaker images-Sep-29-2026-01-01-12-0994-PM

Ben Norbury 

Round Table 3 - From SCADA to Strategy: Unlocking Imperfect OT Data

Discussion points:

  • What prevents operational data from being used beyond the control room, and how do we unlock it at the enterprise layer?

  • How can businesses blend raw OT data with wider enterprise sources (like SAP, workforce, and external data) to drive better decision-making
  • How do we handle naturally "imperfect" OT data—with its noise, gaps, and latency—so it is actually trusted by the business?
Speaker images-Jul-14-2026-01-30-44-0748-PM

Armna Iqbal 

Round Table 4 - Could a low-value take-back scheme work for your products? Testing BIC's lighter recovery model
Discussion points:
  • Identify which of your products are the strongest candidates for take-back. Test your portfolio against the conditions that make BIC's model work: knowing your materials, being able to disassemble what you make, and having customer touchpoints already in place.
  • Decide which barrier to tackle first. Work through the practical blockers with peers, from collection costs and logistics to mixed-brand returns and customer behaviour, and prioritise the one that would unlock progress fastest.
  • Determine whether to go it alone or build partnerships. Assess whether you could run a scheme on your own, as BIC does today, or would need recovery, logistics or EPR partners to make the economics work.

    Speaker images-Sep-29-2026-01-49-39-8625-PMElodie Jupin

Round Table 5 - From Data to Decisions: Driving Efficiency Through Live Data
Discussion points:
  • What data matters most when making decisions that improve energy efficiency, asset performance, and operational resilience?
  • How can organisations move beyond dashboards and reporting to deliver meaningful action and measurable outcomes?
  • What does a successful data-driven decision-making strategy look like in practice, and what lessons can be applied across industries?

Speaker images

Adam Goves

Round Table 7 - Can renewable energy really stack up commercially?

Discussion points:

  • Explore what is holding businesses back from accessing renewable electricity options
  • Consider where sustainability ambitions and commercial priorities can align
  • Explore how new procurement models could make renewable energy accessible to more businesses

    21-2

    Steve Sorah

    22-1

    Akshath Reddy