A digital platform could help businesses such as Mars cut industrial energy costs by 6.7% a year.

That’s according to provider 2degrees, which conducted a 40-company trial of its ‘Manufacture 2030 bee’ online tool, with businesses expected to save an average of more than £160,000 annually.

The organisation hopes the platform will be able to halve the amount of resources used in manufacturing by 2030 by enabling factory engineers to easily identify, prioritise and implement the most suitable energy saving actions.

In turn, this would help reduce operational costs, risks and impacts.

The most common actions so far have proved to be around high energy consuming technologies like air compressor systems and refrigeration.

Founder and CEO of 2degrees, Martin Chilcott, said: “One of the biggest barriers for people progressing energy efficiency projects is a lack of time and resources to manage and execute a complex and long list of actions.

“The key to M2030 bee is that it makes this simple.”