Interflon Scotland Video Case Study

Interflon Scotland's sustainability page
Interflon Scotland's LinkedIn

Other organisations Keri worked with on sustainability:

Thrive
Green Small Business
Scottish Enterprise

"It didn't feel like you were an external consultant. It felt like you were working within my team, which was really positive... the ability to really simplify quite complex, long explanations of things... and simplify them in a way that was still very engaging, clear to read and visuals, it's been great."

Keri Craig
Director, Interflon Scotland

Labrakita Marketing supported Interflon Scotland's Director, Keri Craig, through a pivotal year of growth. After participating in Scottish Enterprise's Pathways to Scale programme, Keri received a grant to accelerate the business. Part of this investment focused on understanding and communicating Interflon Scotland's sustainability impact in a way that was transparent, credible and resonated with technical buyers in the engineering sector.

Labrakita Marketing worked with Keri to transform raw sustainability data into compelling case studies, create a dedicated sustainability landing page, and populate a visual showcase tool. Our MD, Samantha Tonge, brought an external communications lens to help Interflon Scotland articulate their value proposition beyond product specifications, focusing instead on the measurable business benefits their customers achieve.

Main outcomes of working together:

• Data-driven case studies with third-party validation in an easy-to-understand visual format
• Sustainability landing page with high engagement metrics (visitors spending significantly longer than on other pages)
• Content for a showcase tool that helps the team respond to "where's the data?" objections
• Conference-ready content that positioned Keri as a credible voice on sustainability in lubrication
• Clear, greenwash-free messaging that resonates with expert sustainability buyers

Watch the video below or read the transcript to find out more.

 

Transcript:

Samantha Tonge: I'm here with Keri Craig from Interflon Scotland. Keri, can you give us a bit of information about who you are and what Interflon Scotland is?

Keri Craig: I'm Keri, Director of Interflon Scotland. Interflon is a lubrication technology company. It's a Dutch company, so our manufacturing and R&D work is done in the Netherlands and in Scotland we've been working for over 35 years across a whole variety of industries, from pelagic fishing boats to whiskey distilleries, to cashmere mills, to utilities and water industry. The main focus of our work is helping our customers to do lubrication, better support their asset management, their asset reliability, reduce their downtime, and also importantly, reduce their costs, reduce their waste. So trying to do, more with less.

Samantha: Sustainability is something that's really important to you, isn't it? 

Keri: Sustainability isn't really the first word that springs to mind when you talk about lubrication, but doing lubrication well with the right products and the right support can really unlock a lot of businesses' sustainability objectives and goals. And that's really what we're focused on trying to do.

Samantha: You've recently done a sustainability, is project the right word for it?

Keri: Last year I was one of the participants in the Scottish Enterprise Pathways to Scale program. Through that program, we received a grant for the business, which we could, invest in an area that we felt was important for our business and that would help us to accelerate growth. For me, that was around this sustainability piece.

So it was understanding where we are currently as a business, where we aspire to be. What steps we need to take to get there. That was a piece of work we did, with, Thrive Consulting.

We worked with Green Small Business who helped us with our, carbon footprint calculation and our net zero action plan.
With Thrive, it was focused on doing our double materiality assessment. And then the third piece of work was, well, how do we communicate all of this? That's obviously where the work that we were doing, came in. It was around, how do we communicate both what we're doing and what we think we can support customers with in a way that's transparent and honest and isn't greenwashing.

Samantha: One of the first things we did was put some case studies together because you were actually able to gather data on what you're doing in terms of, sustainability and how much money you were saving because they tend to go hand in hand. 

Keri: We've been working in Scotland for over 35 years and, over that time we've amassed a huge number of stories, of successes customers have had results they have seen, and problems we have solved with our Interflon solutions. When I was working with Jane, from Thrive, it was reinforced that stories just don't cut it sadly. I'd come out with all these examples and go, we've done this or we've achieved that with our customers. And she'd go, oh, that's lovely. Where's the data? Where's the evidence? And she really challenged me and pushed me, to go away and get the data and document it.

It was important to look at the data behind those stories. We've got very good relationships with customers and they were happy to work with me to dig in and, scrape away at the particular success stories and pull out the data.

We worked with Devtank through the smart manufacturing data hub. and Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge. What we did with them was implement very simple sensor solutions, with a couple of customers, on a pilot basis.

The principle behind these projects was we will record energy data over a period of time before a period of time to establish a baseline on industrial gear boxes, and then we did oil sampling. So we were able to check the oil condition, the levels of wear and contaminants in the oils.
We then intervened in those gearboxes with one of our gearbox solutions. And then we continued to log the data. These sensor solutions provide a cloud-based. visual record in real time of what is happening in that gearbox in terms of the energy savings, the draw, the current and all these things.

So it was very, easy to see the impact, and importantly for me was to have that third party validation, We had statistical analysts from the University of Cambridge, looking at the data and pulling out the results and saying, actually, there's statistically significant results here in terms of improvements.

So suddenly to have all this data, how am I going to present this in a way that is visually appealing. But also gives enough information that instills confidence and trust it's not just pulled out of their sleeve, it's got enough context to it.

And also enough context that people go, oh, hang on a minute, this is actually something that's quite relevant to my business, or a problem that I'm having. Making them think, well, how could I benefit, or my business could benefit from doing something similar. What was really great about working with you on that was having that external lens on it and communications focused lens on it, and, I know that's what you do at Labrakita.

It's about making things simple and that's not dumbing it down, it's just making it easier for people to get the concept quickly and easily and take something away from it. We've come up with these really fantastic visual documents, which you could scroll through and then suddenly you stop and you've got this one page where it's like the results in a glance and it's really visual you've got a before and after a big thing and a small thing So that's a really positive story and I think, makes me feel happy that we've taken the time.. It's taken a lot of time because, we are a small team and it's new ways of working and gathering evidence On site with customers sometimes it's difficult to have the access to take photos of things or, get the approvals.

What we've also created is really valuable case studies for the businesses themselves. The case studies have been signed off by the business with their logo and that's because they've gone, well, actually this is something I could present to my bosses or include in my results because it's actually really well put together. So I think that's a real added value thing that we've been able to do for those customers too, in terms of giving them something back.

Samantha: And I guess that's the other side of sustainability. Your customer's customers care about sustainability. So if you've got a case study that shows what they're doing in terms of sustainability, their marketing department's going to love that too.

Keri: Yeah, exactly. Lubrication is such an overlooked area of engineering and maintenance, in terms of what it can deliver This is something that's really interesting to look at through this different lens to be able to frame lubrication in a way that clearly shows the value it brings to business at different levels.

So it might have been in reducing CO2, reducing costs directly, in a particular project, reducing, the number of maintenance intervals. We've got a really nice, case study where we've rolled out, a new BioMarine grease, and seeing how well it is performing and the positive impact on working in an area of biodiversity. I think the case studies, cover so many different angles and really highlight the value of good lubrication. 

That has then allowed us to get to a place where we can talk about what we're doing with confidence and clarity. Through pulling together all the case studies with your support and our webpage, I was then in a position to stand on a stage and talk about all of this at a conference 10 months later, wind back a year I was nowhere near being able to do that.

Samantha: So presumably the sales team, are making good use of them?

Keri: The team are now using them increasingly because the customer has said, where's the data?This is all very well and good, but have you got anything to show me to prove this? And then now they're able to say, oh, well actually yes I do.
It's been really useful and what's been brilliant is. the team can see the value it brings I've now had, guys in the team proactively sending me photos and going, I've got a case study for you to do with my customer.

I went in and I asked if we could maybe take some photos and record the benefits. And here they are I've been asking for help with this. They've started going, yeah, here, here's my contribution. I think that will only continue.

Samantha: I know it's early days, but have there been any case studies that have actually got you over the line in terms of sales yet?

Keri: It is early days. I was at an event this week where I had the opportunity to speed pitch Interflon. It was a sustainable supplier day. I got to speed pitch our solutions in terms of how they can support, a sustainable approach to asset management. One of the slides I had was a screenshot of the case studies of that visual page with the icons on it.

One of those case studies I knew would hit the mark because it was very specific related to the industry that, this event was for. I could see quite a few " aha . That's actually really interesting". So now I've been able to share the full case study. They're an existing customer. I'm looking to enhance the relationship I'm confident the credibility this case study can bring is, something enhances our reputation with the customer.

Samantha: And because you've got all that data, backing it up, you know, you're not greenwashing, which , you see a lot of people doing.

Keri: We've spoken a lot about it, over the last few months and, it makes me twitch. I've become hyper aware of it, Thanks to the work with Thrive. We've done all this work and I don't want to undermine all that work by not getting the messaging right. You see a lot of messaging going out particularly on LinkedIn. And it, misses the mark.

A lot of businesses haven't twigged how important it is. There's legislation about greenwashing and people need to take it seriously. The people working in sustainability are experts in the field and they see right through it. I would never want sustainability teams from our customers to be going, " they're just like saying whatever because they think that's what we want to hear". I want them to look at what we're saying and go, " oh wow, that's actually really interesting. ". You need to be so careful about your messaging because of who you're speaking to, they can see through it. If you're not doing it in the right way.

Samantha: This was the same time that you were about to launch a showcase tool. Where we've got all those case studies and other information that we've pulled together. how's that, going? 

Keri: So we came up with this idea for a showcase tool, and we worked with CAD People. It's a platform where we are hosting case studies stories and solutions in a way that is very visual, easy to navigate and is something that we can share with our customersI love it. I think it's a brilliant tool. I'm really happy with where we got it to. I was probably a little bit naive in terms of how quickly I thought we could populate this tool.

We're now sending it out to customers and Is it perfect? No, it's not. But I'm feeling more comfortable with sharing things, even if they're not perfect. Actually the content that is on there is really brilliant and I want to get it out there. My idea behind this tool was that, something lands in your inbox and you might open it up sit with a cup of tea and browse through it. It'd be more of a magazine kind of experience as opposed to, a really long corporate PDF type document. And I also hope that would help my team share information about what we're doing in a more solutions focused way.

Samantha: It's talking about what's important to your target audience. Not, oh, this lubrication has these specifications, which isn't really important to the customer. 

Keri: There's some really brilliant work being done in the lubricant industry at the moment, by Steve Knapp and Rob Taylor of Plan Grow.
They've done a huge piece of work around the buyer revolution, specifically in the lubricants industry. From that , what does the future lubricant salesperson look like? And how do they behave and what information do they need to be sharing?

And it really hits the mark. It's been done through research with buyers, and it's the buyers that are saying, we've got the internet now. we can Google hydraulic oil, or, food grade lubricant. They do a lot of research before they come to you and ask for you to speak to them. So you're right, it's not about sharing information about the products. I wouldn't say nobody really cares. I think people do care, but it's not as important as what problems can this solve? What are the wider problems that this could address or what are the value adds this product can bring? Through the case studies that we're bringing in, it's highlighting energy costs, health and safety benefits a more rationalised approach to lubrication. You don't need five EP2 greases on site when, one of ours can do all of that. It is communicating those things in a different kind of way and that's what our customers and buyers are looking for more and more.

Samantha: Funnily enough, I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday about selling value rather than arguing about cost.

Keri: Especially when you are selling a premium product. We do come across a lot of price sensitivity and people will be like, why would I be paying this much for the product when I only pay that much for the other one that I'm using?

And we're not talking differences in pennies. It's is quite significant difference. When you start to look at how lubricating technology works, why it works the way it does, and what that actually means in terms of your assets and the approach we take.

One way I've tried to explain it is, when you open a COSHH cabinet, they're typically filled with products that do a job that is very specifically stated on the tin.

It will say, this is a release spray or a penetrating spray or a chain lubricant but it's very specific for a job. So you see multiple products in the cabinet, low unit cost, but we take the opposite approach. our products don't do what they say on the tin typically.

So what that allows us to do is, to have a much broader range of applications for a product so you're not pigeonholing your product into one task. when you open that cabinet, rather than having. All these different products. We've got two products, an oil product and a grease product.

They replace up to 17 typical maintenance products. The value goes so much more beyond unit cost.

Samantha: And the other thing is you need to use less of it. When you talk about all those sustainability benefits as well, all of sudden that's less maintenance that needs to be done, production running longer in manufacturing, so more product is produced. All of these things. I imagine it stacks up to quite a lot of money.

Keri: It does. I would love to do a case study that stacks up, all the benefits and, the savings and the additional production, benefits through doing lubrication well. 

Samantha: Might be a long case study. It even costs money too, have packaging taken away.

Keri: It does and part of what is really important as well is product life cycle . So it's how much does this three, four pound tube of grease actually really cost when you factor in? All of those things and the waste and the disposal of the waste it's probably quite a bit more than three or four pounds.

Samantha: Another thing we did was create a landing page on the website.

Keri: Yes, we did. I love it

Samantha: There wasn't a page that existed on the Interflon website that drilled into sustainability. so we created one specifically for Interflon Scotland. 

Keri: Yeah, that's right. one of the great things about Interflon is that we have a global reach we're in over 50 countries, which gives us the opportunity to, draw on customer experience, and results from, a huge variety of countries.

But one of the challenges we have is localising the website It was important for me that we could have a place to show what we're doing in sustainability, to show our commitments to show that we've implemented an EMS achieved certification and are working towards certain goals.
But also our biggest impact is really in, how we support our customers. So the best way for us to do that was through this landing page.

It's got the, the key information. It's got our policies. What has really struck me in terms of its value is that when you look at the analytics people are spending time on it. They're spending time engaging with the content on the page than the other pages on our website, which to me indicates that what's there is of interest. Which is great. I think that just highlights to me that it was an important thing to do. It suggests the right people are finding it if they're spending that much time on it. 

We're sharing it through LinkedIn posts, we're sharing it in our emails, proactively with our customers saying, we've done this piece of work, here's information on it. That's for me is the preferred approach it's something new and important for us that we want our customers and future customers to know.

Samantha: So people looking at the moment, they've either been, sent a link directly, or they found it organically.

Keri: That is important because I don't want to appear as a sponsored link I want to communicate with honesty and integrity about it. If you've looked for something specific and you found us, then this should be of interest.

Samantha: Have you got any stats that you want to share?

Keri: There's a lot. One of the projects that we did with a customer. We put in a number of different sensors on different assets on this site and one of the assets, which was the one I was most interested in, brought the best results.

So that was quite nice. We saw a reduction of 70%. in CO2, we saw a nine day return on investment . So the investment made and changing the oil and upgrading the oil, the payback was in nine days. We've got other case studies where, people might be incredulous and be like, " do you really need less of the Interflon greasethan the one that we've been using." And there's a really nice case study. with Ullapool Harbour on the linkspan, bridges and, the passenger bridges. there we saw a reduction in maintenance interventions. specifically for relubrication.

On one asset, if I'm not mistaken, it was 10 interventions down to four in a year and seven down to two.

One example where products were used for circuit breaker maintenance on, oil rigs offshore. that was an astounding figure. It was from, 90% failure rate to zero. Wow. It doesn't really get much better than that.

Another story where we worked to install an auto lubrication system with a customer where they were experiencing up to 15 weeks of downtime a year on one particular bit of the asset that had to be sent overseas for repair. Since putting in the auto lubrication system, in November, 2023, so two years that bit of the asset hasn't broken down.

If you think about that, up to 15 weeks of downtime reduced, but also the carbon involved in having to send parts overseas to be repaired, that's been eliminated on that particular asset. So, those are really positive results.

Samantha: Would you recommend Labrakita Marketing to other people.

Keri: Yes, for a number of different levels, you, had absolutely phenomenal amounts of patience, with me in particular. you had phenomenal amounts of patience, which is, hugely undervalued, by people. your ability to work with a business like ours with, not a huge number of people involved. I don't have a big team helping with different bits and pieces. So your patience with me as I worked on things was really appreciated. But also your patience in terms of how. I think when we first spoke, I had one idea and then as we started working on things, I would go, oh, this is evolving a little bit and maybe we need to focus on this.

So you were very, good at flexing and adapting and working with me, which I really appreciated. So it didn't feel like you were an external consultant. It felt like you were working within my team, which was really positive. I think as well, the ability to really simplify quite complex, long explanations of things, particularly the fishing boat case studies and simplify them in a way that was still very engaging, clear to read and visuals, it's been great. And then I think beyond that, the relationships that we've also been able to build through getting to know each other and working together have been great too. So yeah, it's been absolute pleasure. and I'm pretty sure that, we'll, we'll have other things to work on it, future points in time as well. 

Samantha: Do you have anything to plug? 

Keri: I would encourage people to take a look at our sustainability landing page. There you will see examples of the work that Samantha helped us with at Labrakita. Also, more information about our commitments to sustainability as Interflon Scotland, and how we're working with our customers. If you want to get in touch with us, there's a contact form through that website.
You can just, type into Google Smart Lubrication, Less Waste, and you'll get the page.

Samantha: Wherever this goes out, I'll put that link.

Keri: You can also connect with us through LinkedIn. We are Interflon Scotland Limited, so there's lots of Interflons on LinkedIn. We are specifically Interflon Scotland Limited, so you get more information about some of the work we do and the projects we're working on. 

Samantha: Brilliant. Thank you so much.

Keri: You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.

Samantha: And thank you, everyone, for listening.