Freight start-up Ofload picks up $31m to launch carbon emissions platform

An Australian start-up that helps manage freight across multiple carriers has picked up $31m from investors to launch a new carbon emissions tracking platform.

Freight logistics start-up Ofload has raised $31m from investors.

Freight logistics start-up Ofload has picked up $31m from investors and deployed the new capital into a carbon emissions tracking platform.

The start-up’s chief executive, Geoffroy Henry, said the decision was only logical as more Australian companies took stock of their environmental impact – not only by choice but at the demand of their customers.

“You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Australian companies are telling us they foresee significant challenges in meeting climate change targets unless they have access to the right solutions – and they want to start,” Mr Henry said.

“This innovative platform will provide them with the tools needed to accurately measure and ­effectively reduce their scope 3 carbon emissions, setting a new standard in the industry.”

Mr Henry told The Australian the platform was now leveraging data to measure all trips, and even some of those that businesses on its platform didn’t directly carry.

“If you imagine that some of the biggest Australian businesses actually use 20 different suppliers or carriers or solutions to transport their goods, then we present just a fraction of the total scope 3 emissions,” he said.

“So what we would do is aggregate information from all of the rest of the data in our platform and be able to communicate on the entire transportation scope 3 carbon emissions.”

Ofload chief executive Geoffroy Henry

The platform could measure emissions based on several different factors including the age of the vehicle, its route and the time of day it travelled. The new $31m capital round now values Ofload at $350m, representing a 200 per cent growth in a little under two years.

This round, which was opened in December last year, was led by Yarra Capital Management, with additional investment from King River Capital and Jungle Ventures.

All three firms were on board with the new carbon emissions tracking platform, Mr Henry said.

Ofload now also found itself in a unique position where its data was being leveraged to influence behavioural changes across the industry, he said.

One example, he said, was an alcohol brand that wanted to change its customers’ ordering behaviours but they wouldn’t bite, so they used data from the platform that showed if its orders were combined with a competitor it would result in a 20 per cent emissions reduction.

“They implemented it the next day. Sometimes business decisions just need additional information,” Mr Henry said.

“Sometimes when you need to change or amend behaviours of ordering or relationship with your own clients, because it doesn’t always directly trickle down to price or costs, you need additional information to get them on board.”

Insights from the new platform.

The start-up counts some of Australia’s largest companies as clients, including Metcash and its businesses IGA, Mitre 10, Home Hardware and Bottle-O.

In another example of combining trucks, Mr Henry said Ofload had managed to convince an alcohol and paper company to use a single larger truck, which resulted in both companies using 25 per cent less trucks on the route between two capital cities.

Many small businesses were also set to benefit from the new platform as its aggregate data could help measure their impact as well, Mr Henry said.

“There are 58,000 trucking companies in Australia and the vast majority, 90-plus of them, have less than 10 trucks. About 24,000 out of those 58,000 transport companies are owner-operated,” he said.

Those smaller companies at the end of the freight chain were called long tail companies.

“One of the things larger corporations enjoy is the ability for them to protect the long tail to make sure they can still tap into them because they are usually the most efficient and the best-run businesses,” Mr Henry said.