Bridging the Sustainability Gap

Services

We help bridge the Sustainability Gap to build enabled, resilient and impactful business and supply chains.

Coloured shapes breaking through stone

How we help

We offer two strategic approaches that help bridge the Sustainability Gap; ‘The Fixer’ and ‘The Strategist’.

Hire ‘The Fixer’ to identify, gap-fill and align your immediate sustainability & ESG needs.

Coloured shape breaking through stone

Protecting business value with balanced approaches and defensible sustainability claims.

Including:

  • Demystifying regulation.
  • Open and honest critique.
  • Emerging challenges and demands.
  • Peer benchmarking.
  • Hands-on support and guidance for market repositioning.
  • Safeguarding value in environmental claims.
  • Upskilling teams in responsible marketing.

Delivering tactically for the immediate term. 

Including:

  • Policy, systems and procedures.
  • Strategy.
  • Governance and risk.
  • Performance metrics.
  • Reporting and disclosures.
  • Compliance and audit.
  • Climate action.
  • Responsible supply chains.
  • Circularity and sustainable materials.
  • Producer responsibility.
  • Adaptation and resilience.
  • Upskilling and training.

Helping your business build stronger foundations for growth.

Including:

  • Customer sustainability / ESG scorecards.
  • Customer sustainability and climate-related responses.
  • Support for media and crisis communications.
  • Support for EHS / ESG audit or due diligence.
  • Third-party ESG / sustainability disclosure platforms.
  • Support for setting sustainability lending criteria.
  • Pre-investment gap-fill and sustainable finance alignment.
  • Aligning portfolio companies with investment thesis and performance metrics.

Working with you to reduce exposure to risk, to realise value and secure investment.

Including:

  • Buy-side sustainability / ESG due diligence.
  • Post-acquisition 100 day planning.
  • EHS / ESG compliance auditing.
  • Supply chain auditing.
  • EHS / ESG due diligence auditor training.
  • Pre-exit planning.
  • Developing pre-exit value creation narrative.
  • Sell-side sustainability / ESG due diligence.
  • Sell-side retained deal process advisor.

We support managers and leaders with specialist sustainability and ESG training and upskilling programmes.

Including:

  • Essentials workshops.
  • Online 1-2 hour awareness building sessions.
  • 1-3 day essentials to deep dive sessions.
  • Bespoke 1-to-1 coaching sessions.
  • Expert masterclasses.

Delivered as a retained service, we provide regular weekly or monthly support to help with immediate capacity needs, transition cover or strategy.

Including:

  • Time or capacity-challenged deliverables.
  • Team transition coaching and development.
  • Input into strategic reviews.
  • Third-party view / independent opinion.
  • Cross-functional sustainability integration.
  • Board support and upskilling.
  • Investor portfolio company NED / strategic guidance.

Hire ‘The Strategist’ to develop and build-out your sustainability positioning and value proposition.

Blue shape on grid platform

Establishing presence and your space in the market. 

Including:

  • Gap analysis.
  • Peer benchmarking.
  • Initial baseline position.
  • New viewpoints.
  • Validating approaches.

Delivering value, resilience and meaningful outcomes with commercially-focused sustainability and ESG strategy.

Including:

  • Discovery workshops.
  • Stakeholder analysis.
  • Stakeholder engagement.
  • Materiality assessment.
  • Board workshops.
  • Focus and impact analysis.
  • Group strategy development.
  • Micro strategies (issue-specific) (e.g. climate, circular economy, ethical trade).
  • Upskilling and training.
  • Integration support.

Supporting the sustainability business case for efficiency, risk, long-term value creation, and investment.

Including:

  • Defining value drivers. 
  • Resilience for disruptors and shocks.
  • The ‘impact’ of proposed sustainability strategies.
  • Reality check on targets and goals.
  • Sustainability-aligned capital & investment plans.
  • Building ESG equity value narrative.

Balancing regulatory sustainability & ESG performance metrics and the need for decision-useful data.

Including:

  • Clarity on the ‘nice to have’ versus ‘mandatory’.
  • Supporting standard and framework choices.
  • Framework & standard readiness review.
  • Alignment with business strategy.
  • Integration support.

Introducing proactive management for future resilience, protecting against  adverse media events and supply chain disruption.

Including:

  • Codes of conduct / ethics.
  • Responsible procurement standards and criteria.
  • Supplier alignment.
  • Supply chain mapping and ESG risk analysis.
  • Upskilling and training.
  • Ethical trade (labour standards and human rights) reviews and audits.
  • Corrective action and crisis management.
  • Mitigation and adaptation for future challenges.
  • Designing for circularity.
  • Supplier engagement, training and upskilling.

Building employee, customer and investor confidence through telling your sustainability value story effectively.

Including:

  • Setting structure, form, style and key messages.
  • Alignment with regulatory and voluntary frameworks and standards.
  • Outlining the value created and impact achieved.
  • Business backed clarity on climate-transition plans.
  • Making robust and defensible claims.
  • Communicating missed goals and difficult outcomes.
  • Upskilling and training.

What to expect

Professional and confidential sustainability and ESG support, delivered on-time and in budget.

01. Discovery

Call or send us an email and we’ll be in contact soon to set up a discovery call.

02. Meeting

Face to face meeting preferred? Simply set a time and date to discuss your needs.

03. Our Offer

We’ll send you a proposal and quotation designed around our discussions.

04. We Begin

Once everything is all agreed, we’ll begin our working relationship.

Need a little more?

Your questions

It’s natural to ask questions and we might just have the answers below.

Absolutely.  From simple beginnings through to whole-scale company strategy we support your teams through design, development, delivery and integration of impactful and innovative programmes. See our Services above for further details, or Contact us for a free discovery call.

Most likely yes, but if not, we won’t keep you guessing.  It sounds like you might need The Fixer; someone to come in and help with short-term targeted support on specific issues and time-bound requirements, such as developing initial sustainability approaches; responding to customer requests for information; policies; annual sustainability reports; or carbon footprints.

Perhaps try our fractional Head, Director or Chief Sustainability Officer (fCSO) service, where you receive leadership direction and hands-on support on a week to week or monthly basis for as long as you need it. 

Advance your sustainability and ESG needs without the commitment of a full-time hire and associated overheads.

Yes and this is at the heart of where we operate; working with portfolio companies to help build in future resilience, sustainability direction, impact and value.

Using our unique experience of having worked in PE-backed business, SMEs and with mid-market companies at all stages of the investment cycle, we’re a strong partner.

On the sustainability / ESG side, yes. Whether you are a university technology spin-off, sustainability-led innovator, or growing company, our extensive experience with EHS / ESG due diligence and private capital investors is one of our strongest and valuable advantages. We’ve been on both the buy and sell side and can help prepare your company for a smooth alignment and integration process.

Yes, it’s a particular focus area of ours; helping ensure the company’s sustainability and ESG impact, credentials and messaging are robust and authentic and that the value created is measureable. 

With decades of experience in EHS / ESG due diligence, corporate sustainability and time spent in both plc and private-equity backed companies during the selling process, we’re a credible and effective partner throughout the process.

Using our ‘lived’ experience of directly working in the supply chain supplying larger customers and multiple channel retailers, we have first-hand experience of this position.

Our Fixer and Strategist solutions are a perfect balance, providing alignment and capacity building during engagement, underpinned by a consistent and robust responsible procurement strategy.

Always. You’re hiring deep expertise and three decades of experience. Each project is designed, developed and completed by the founder of Pitchstone Consulting, Matt Farnsworth. You can read more on our About us page.

This naturally depends on the scope and your own expectations. We always endeavour to fit in with and be responsive to your needs. However, where it’s simply not possible, we’ll be upfront with you and advise on what can be achieved in the timeframe.

Yes, although please contact us to discuss as some services may not be possible due to constraints (e.g. insurance, tax, country registration).

Delivery of our outputs and materials will be in English only.

Our pricing is disclosed upfront within each client proposal and is clearly broken down into professional fees, expenses and relevant taxes. Further budgetary detail can be provided for more complex, milestone specific and longer term programmes of work. 

Simply head over to the Contact page and reach out by telephone or email, we’ll be happy to help.