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Episode 7: Show Notes
We’ve all seen the horrible images showing the effect of plastic on our sealife. Today’s guest, Jordy Kay, tells the story of how he is working to introduce innovation to the plastic industry with a vision to change the global approach. Tune in to hear the story of how he and his wife met and started Great Wrap, and their mission statement to reimagine today’s materials to solve tomorrow’s problems through providing biodegradable clingwrap for home and catering wrap for hospitality. Jordy shares the story of the company’s growth and the development of their unique product, encouraging listeners to get involved in any way they can if they are passionate about building a better world. Join us today to hear more!
Key Points From This Episode:
Quotable Quotes
“At the vineyard I took a real keen interest in the way that nature can express itself through a vine. Making wine’s quite an artistic thing, but also it is science, and it’s this beautiful hybrid of the two and I took a real fascination in that.” — @jordykayGW [0:02:40]
“All of these industries around us like energy, transport, agriculture, construction, they’re all changing really rapidly. We’re all going to drive an Easycar ten years from now and we might even get to Mars in our lifetime. There’s a crazy amount of innovation in various industries, but plastic? It was just disgusting, the lack of innovation.” — @jordykayGW [0:09:12]
“We knew that we wanted to make products from food waste. We knew that in Australia there’s over one million tonnes of food waste that goes to landfill.” — @jordykayGW [0:15:05]
“Our purpose is to reimagine today’s materials to solve tomorrow’s problems. That’s what we stand for.” — @jordykayGW [0:17:02]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Jordy Kay on Twitter
Jordy Kay on LinkedIn
Sustainable Digitalisation Project
Host Nick Gonios
Producer Jim Lounsbury
Nick Gonios: 0:06 Hi everyone, welcome to The Circulist Quest Podcast. I'm Nick Gonios us and today I'm speaking with Jordy Kay, co founder and CEO of Great Wrap, the world's first certified compostable and biodegradable cling wrap. Jordy took an unlikely path to becoming one of the fastest circular businesses in Australia, starting in the wine industry, where he was working in vineyards by the age of 15. By 16, he was running tasting rooms. And by 17, he had dropped out of high school and moved to Europe to become a winemaker. That led him back to Australia, where he bootstrapped his own winery, creating wines for fine establishments around the world, ever the entrepreneur and with a growing interest in sustainability, Jordy and his wife, Julia decided to build a sustainably focused business to disrupt the cling wrap industry. That was how Great Wrap was born. An incredible Australian success story, and an example of the opportunities that are emerging for sustainable and game changing businesses in the circular economy. In this episode, we're going to learn how Jordy came to realise Great Wrap's opportunity to reimagine a circular, closed loop world without compromising the customer experience. Jody, welcome.
Jordy Kay: 1:21
Thank you. Thanks for having us on the show.
Nick Gonios: 1:23
Yeah, looking quite excited to have this conversation. And you know, you guys are doing great things locally here in Australia, and hopefully, going out to the rest of the world. So with that sort of little opening around your background and stuff, which is quite intriguing. It's great to see he's somebody like you sort of gone off and as a winemaker at a very young age to go to Europe and learn the craft, so to speak. What can you tell us about the journey back in those days, without any incumbencies and a free spirit?
Jordy Kay: 1:55
Yeah, it's a funny how it all happened. I grew up in a wine region. You know, I sort of had the first job at 11 delivering newspapers, then I swept the floor at the local surf shop. And I flipped burgers at McDonald's. And then I ended up at a vineyard. When I was 50, I would have had a pretty good interest already at 15, I think for those jobs. And then I was sort of picking grapes, working in the vineyard running coffees then sort of found myself in the cellar door running tastings, obviously, without a responsible serving of alcohol certificate at a local vignette and, and really learned a lot and I always struggled in school, I never really went to a pretty conservative school, I always struggled with kind of being told how and what to learn. And then so on at the vignette, so that I took a real keen interest, I guess, in the way that nature can kind of express itself through a vine that sort of, I guess, making wines quite an artistic thing. But it's also it's science. And it's a beautiful kind of hybrid of the two. And I took a real fascination in that. And yet, I think I was in Year 10 or 11 when someone said, I can get you a job in Margaret River. So to pack my bag till my parents sorry that I'm out and move to Margaret River. And then later that year, I found myself to be living in Australia. And then I was sort of I think I was still 17 and travelling Morocco surfing and yeah, just kind of kept going from there.
Nick Gonios: 3:16
That's crazy. So how long was that part of you? Is it was it? How long in your sort of career or sort of your life? Was that sort of that journey in Europe? Like, is it five years out? I actually haven't I should have should have looked that up. But what was it? How long was it?
Jordy Kay: 3:29
Yeah, I think it would have been in total, it's kind of on and off. So I sort of the harvest, obviously, it's ultimate sort of season. So when it's summer here, it's winter in Europe or northern hemisphere. So I sort of travel back and forth. And I'd come back to the office here and make wine in usually, depending to LA or in Tasmania. And then I go back to Europe, and I go work in France or Portugal, Austria. And I sort of did that. At least I'd say seven years. And then I sort of got some work with a mentor. I later became a mentor. But I'm Gary at Jamshid. And to the he's sort of, I think taught me a hell of a lot. And then I sort of took on a lease for a vineyard on the Mornington Peninsula. I literally had, like $500 I got a credit card. I don't a handshake agreement. I sort of took on this this beautiful vineyard in that space. So yeah, I guess I managed to kind of build a brand with my own sort of wine label. And within 18 months, I was able to convince the bank to give us some money. I think I actually probably fudged a lot of the documents for that mortgage. It was back before the Royal Commission, and I was able to sort of make up a hell of a lot of things to get this mortgage so that I could buy this rundown vineyard where I built a cabin in a forest it was in the Otway Ranges. And I purchased Yes, I think 10 acres of Pinot and Chardonnay, which I converted to organic farming and I built a cabin that was about 25 square metres in in the sort of the woods of this property and back down To the National Park and yeah, went to the toilet in a pocket shelf where the watering can and Yeah, correct and medical aid wine and those mines ended up being sold for the best restaurants around the world around Australia. And I had Yeah, distributors in Hong Kong, New York, LA and also around Australia. And yeah, it's pretty, pretty cool like that a period of my life, you know, like walked into, I think they sort of, you know, Alice Waters and the famous sort of Chef who's the head of the farm to table kind of movement in the US and I walked into sort of a restaurant and, you know, the team to the new I was just sort of by sort of showing up and I was on the wine list and, you know, really come Yeah, I guess beautiful moment. It's something that you kind of aspire to as a winemaker, it's not making wine is isn't about financial success. It's very, like very different to the startup world. Because the wine it's about take as long as you can and craft something super beautiful. And don't worry about the price that you put on it don't put emphasis about that you put emphasis on the experience and what you're trying to create that moment, that snapshot of, of, you know, the terroir, and, and everything. And so when I sort of switched over to starting grape grass, with my wife, Julia, I had to sort of relearn everything, because it's about making something for you know, as a cost as little as possible, sell it for as much as possible, be lean, be fast, be aggressive, you know, so they things which I think a lot of acid have kind of practices that are very natural to Julio myself that because he's an architect, I think they carry over quite strongly into our business. And he kind of fit in the culture diagram that we've kind of created, that's probably very unique compared to a lot of startups.
Nick Gonios: 6:37
Yep, that's, it's amazing story Jordi at the end, and I can resonate from a point of, you know, you like to, you know, somebody that just wants to get it, give it a go and actually, you know, deal with the unknown unknowns and also see gaps in markets. And you've got that sort of, you know, people talk about me, entrepreneurs, bugs, I feel like I've got the entrepreneurs curse can't get out of my system. It's sort of just always see opportunities, right? You're always seeing opportunities and opportunities and problems in the world that could be solved. And, you know, new category creation and all these different areas. And I think, I think your craft being a winemaker, if I can call it a craft, obviously, was it's a combination of art and science, right? You need to sort of have a scientific thought process around how I'm going to bring all this alive with all these different materials and chemicals, and chemistry and then build out an experience that actually makes sense. So which it's great to see and hear you talk about that which obviously as a skill set, gives you a platform to sort of go and do something else in another category, right. So so what was it what was that point in time when you thought I have read sorry, I should say I've read that. You saw this in your in your white suit in the wine industry with our organisations, we're wrapping winemaking isn't distillers and distributors, we're wrapping the plastic around the boxes of the wines going out for memory from what I've read. And that was a bit of an aha moment thinking Hang on what's going on here? Tell us a bit about what was that sort of point in time where you thought, Oh, my God, seriously?
Jordy Kay: 8:07
Yeah, totally. I think it's like, I guess for me, and for Julia, she's sort of doing the design is low cardroom poly buildings. And, and yeah, I'm sort of farming organically and living in a forest. And any kind of you think, oh, what's the point of me farming this way if my neighbor's paddocks are burning around. And so I think we've sort of with climate change, and plastic waste, and political oppression, and I think there was a lot of things out there in the world that, you know, made me really, really angry, I guess you can channel that anger in a variety of ways, you know, you can take to the streets and protest, which is a great, great way to sort of channel that frustration. But for me, I think I sort of need to do something even more tangible than that, I need more than just advocacy. And it was the same. So I think we took that anger, and we knew we wanted to channel that into a company that could somehow make the world a better place. And at first, it was literally just like, classic couple walking along the beach, talking about what can we do, you know, and I was sort of like, I really, like plastic really pisses me off, you know, I just like surely, all of these industries around us, like energy transport, agriculture, construction, they're all They're changing really rapidly. The reality is, we're all gonna drive an Eevee car 10 years from now, and like, who knows, we might even get to Mars in our lifetime. So they say there's this crazy amount of innovation and, and sort of level of sustainability in various industries, that plastic that was just like, disgusting, the lack of innovation in these industries. And, you know, you can go down the vortex of being conspiracy theory, and, you know, there's companies out there trying to suppress innovation, but the reality is like, there's a lot of barriers to market and we sort of understand that now. But, but I think yeah, we sort of, were going alright, let's try and sell plastic like with Where do we start? Let's start with the biggest problem impacting something that's not recycled. So we'll go with soft plastic, you know? And let's start with the biggest soft plastic problem in the world now that honestly, I can't tell you why unwrapping plastic to all these different countries. And you know, like, why can't we just solve that but and then, you know, I've been to a ship shipping yard and seeing, yeah, the shipping containers stacked up knowing all of them. It's filled with pallets and pallet wrap, you drive for any industrial estates at a distribution centre, go to a Linfox, or a toll, it doesn't matter what company it is, they all have to use it there's, and so we will call let's start with pallet rack. And that was the beginning of the journey.
Nick Gonios: 10:39
Wow, that's amazing. It's, you know, it's so simple. Like, in terms of how you got you came about it, it's like this just go after, it's really simple, right? But then, knowing that there are massive big gorillas globally, gorillas, in terms of existing players and operators in market, and there's a system, how it works, which sort of we're learning with as well, from a materials perspective as well, the world doesn't move as fast as we'd like it to change as fast as we like, there's so much inertia, right. So it was quite an interesting, but that's interesting to hear. And then and then you took the step and said, Okay, what was Julius? I mean, it'd be great to have, what was Julie's sort of perspective on this? And sort of, what was it whether obviously, you guys are a couple married, and so forth, and going places together? What was it in that point in time that said, we're going to get into business together? Do we want to do is like, what was that moment in time? Because because I'm thinking about what is. HQ look like? 24/7? Right.
Jordy Kay: 11:40
We registered the name great wrath after being together for three months. So it's quite funny. Yeah, it was really like, early on these discussions. I mean, we've like we met at a pub rooftop fell madly in love, and yet registered a company I guess, some people go travelling or have kids or something. And we started a, you know, a company child together. And the early days were pretty funny, because it was like, Yeah, I was still making wine. Surely it was, you know, living this life on in the CBD of Melbourne and an amazing architecture firm that has offices around the world. And, and so we all kind of live in this like couple of lights. And it was like heavy Institute of Research. Okay, well, we've got to reinvent the material, what's the best material out there? And we knew like, Okay, well biodegradable and compostable. And there's these terms and greenwashing and working our way through it, and going through all of the sort of science and data and trying to figure out what that looks like for us. And so yeah, it was it was just like, late night, every night, it was those tough, you know, like in bed until the wee hours of the morning on your laptop, just like sharing stuff and trying to do that, as well as like getting on a phone call with anyone and everyone that we talked to us. Once we realised we wanted to work in the compostable space, it was like talking to bio plastic resin manufacturers. And because well, if they're making the resin, they're going to want to sell it to someone. So they're going to be very generous with their knowledge. So we sort of started there and chatting to, I guess, experts in circular economy, people that have years of experience in in biopolymers, searching LinkedIn, people, you know, titles, and just like we spent months compiling all of this information to sort of start to form a solid idea of okay, well, if we're going to create a product, what's the composition going to be and, and then, you know, then I'm pretty good at reading type publications and technical data sheets, so I could easily kind of start to form, you know, mentally, okay, it should look and feel like this, in theory, and I guess that's one component of it. But then there's the manufacturing component as well. So then there's temperatures and extrusion temperatures, the and all of these things have a huge impact on your product. And so then we have to kind of figure out how we're going to learn that. And so yeah, the first year was a hell of a lot of research. It was really intense. It was like, I think that was Vegas, it was all pretty tiring. But yeah, that period was pretty, pretty exhausting, because I think it's hard when you're living to live. Really, like people just not meant to be like that. Yeah, it's another way to live. And I think I found once I sort of stopped making wine and focus 100% on grape wrap, my mental wellbeing just went through the roof. And my output went through the roof, because I was doing half on both and Julia was the same It was once we were both 100%. In this is this is what we do now. We don't even entertain the idea of anything else. That was just that's when things just went absolutely exploded for us.
Nick Gonios: 14:36
Yep. So Tom had the potato peel and turning it into a biodegradable wrap actually come about and was that sort of, you know, together with Monash uni collaboration, like what, how did that manifest into into something I mean, it's just an amazing sort of beautiful sort of little narrative, that sort of taking a potato field and turning it to a biodegradable wrap is just amazing. So
Jordy Kay: 14:59
yeah, So I guess we knew that we wanted to make products from food. We knew that in Australia, there's over 1 million tonnes of 1.7 million tonnes of food waste that goes to landfill, which reality attack statics and other things. And that releases greenhouse gases that are 25 times more potent than co2. And we sort of saw that, okay, we've got all this waste. Why don't we focus on that? And then it's sort of like, okay, well, let's look at all the biggest waste problems in Australia. You know, tomatoes are huge, one great marker, another big one, for making wine, and potatoes is an onsen. And we knew that a lot of the biopolymers around the world have been made from starch based products. So that was sort of really kind of the, okay, the catalyst for this site, really, in this, we know that we have huge amounts of potatoes in Australia. And so that was kind of the beginning of that journey, I founded thought publication, Shawn has sort of been able to kind of make some really interesting biopolymers, from potato waste, and that we started to work with this company. And that was sort of the first and current kind of iteration of our product, which is from the humble potato. And yeah, it I guess, in that the work is very much. So that continued on. And in, we've been working with Monash Apple for over a year now. And we've gotten to develop some pretty incredible technology that, you know, we'll be building Australia's first biorefinery next year, where we will convert huge amounts of food waste into rapid and a variety of other products. So yeah, yeah, the sort of journey has been pretty remarkable.
Nick Gonios: 16:34
Yeah, that's amazing. So look, on the on that note, when you tell us about great rep, you know, that give us a you know, give tell, you know, let's say our listeners or viewers who great rep ease and what you guys are driving and what your mission is, and where you're at? And what is the organization's sort of, you know, we want to probably unpack some of the bottlenecks and challenges that you've had, which is all part of the journey. But with the AI tell us a bit about great rap. Tell us about the company and the purpose and mission of the organisation?
Jordy Kay: 17:00
Yes, for sure. I think like really like, yeah, yeah, purpose is to reimagine today's materials to solve tomorrow's problems. That's sort of what we're hearing, and stands for. The way in which we do that is we have a factory on the Mornington Peninsula, sort of Soltau exactly that the former apple pie factory. It's surrounded by paddocks that were once apple orchard. So there's, there's goats and things around us, which is really fantastic. And it's a great sort of environment, we kind of treated that as that pilot captured, where we could really get things off the ground. And we're very excited with sort of the progress we've made there. But we're making close to home, we're making catering wrap to hospitality, which actually is about to be launched next week. And then what's it doing now, telegraph. And we're in we're in trials, with that telegraph with some very, I guess, well known Australian companies that use huge amounts of telegraph and the sort of getting into the early stages of that. But we started this year with just Julia myself. So we launched our first products last year when we launched, because we are Yeah, COVID. Baby, we launched in March 2020. With the world's first certified compostable stretcher, we got that first iteration contract manufacturer overseas, it was just to get us to the next step, we didn't have, you know, we bootstrapped the whole thing. And so this next iteration was able, we were able to sort of go and raise a small amount of money did after the first investment round, at the end of last year, and that helped us set up this little factory. And we we launched that factory in April until you do that, and I didn't hold work, we cleared out everything was crap dating back, you know, decades in this place. And so we had to clear out all of the old machinery and all the equipment, and then we kitted it out without equipment, and we installed that. And at that point, yeah, it was just us. And then we got a few sort of sort of employees on board. And so from April, we went from two staff members, to now we're about 30 staff. So we've enjoyed some of the fastest growth in many startups in a few sort of months. And we did another sort of capital raise with a New York based venture capital fund. And actually, we're just about to launch our sort of third capital raise for the year. And it's not driven by the fact that we're burning cash, but it's because we're growing. And there's so much demand for our product, that we're just having to continue to sort of raise money to sort of meet this demand, which is an amazing condition to sort of find ourselves in and, and so now we're actually setting up our second factory. So we're going from 500 square metres to 3000 square metres in Melbourne, to just outside of the CBD. We're setting up our second factory, and it's enormous. It's like the size of the infield. It's huge. And it's sort of a bit a bit surreal. It's amazing. It's pretty crazy. So yeah, in that site where we're installing a lot of packaging, manufacturing equipment As well as, as I mentioned that bio refinery based on the sort of technology we've developed with Monash so that we can process food waste on site and convert it all into the biopolymers that we use, and where with the, I guess what's most exciting about that facility, and that bio refinery is we use a biopolymer called PHA. And PHA much like you have your your PVC LDPE. And all these other bio polymers are bio polymer, and PHA is made from bacteria leading on the food waste, and then it produces this polymer then we can use to manufacture our products. And the cool thing about that is because it's such a sort of natural process is that once it returns back to nature, it completely breaks down. So if you dropped a piece of our plastic in the ocean, it will completely disappear within 30 days. So I guess it's sort of, we think we're onto something quite big with this, as I guess we're also pretty familiar with this horrible images of you know, plastic in the ocean is that in with this sort of technology, we can actually design our way out of that in the future. And hopefully, within the next 10 years, we won't see any of those horrible images.
Nick Gonios: 21:06
It's amazing God, it's like it's a true circular closed loop approach. Right. You know, and just, it's great to see you guys doing this. I, when you're talking about you're talking about your capital raisings before it is trying to get ahead of the curve on your on your growth, which is predominately going to go into infrastructure, I then sort of, you know, to prepare for that I gather, and headcount and so forth, reminds me of the old.com days where I was part of my first sort of.com venture, we raised 10s of millions of dollars to build sort of Australia's sort of first and only one stop shop for small business services online called PKR. And we raised 10s of millions of dollars, because you're going to laugh, we had to buy hundreds of servers to build our own cloud that. And we were hoping for them to come and not too many people came. So we had to change our model, right. But it was interesting in comparison to what it is now to what it is, what it was back then, to what it is now in terms of the software tech sector is very different, because it's all on demand, right? But the the area that you you're focusing on is actually real tangible, what I call bits, it's not, it's not the it's sorry, the atoms, not the bits, the bits are relatively easy. Now, sort of the bit space businesses are relatively easy in software, and AI and all that are relatively easy to sort of get started. And I think I look at what you guys are doing get you much more of a tour of pure startup from my point of view, because you're going out to some of the harder, much more infrastructure, heavy problems that need to be sort of tackled and, and come about. So I take my hat off to you guys, so that it's great to see. And interestingly enough, you have, you know, a seed investor, which was Simon Griffiths, the CEO of who gives a crap right from memory, for looking out and doing my research. And it was great to see that they're, I would say they're a companion sister company sort of on that mission in some way, sort of doing good with sort of, you know, a mission purpose driven organisation in terms of reinvent the proposition, a market, which sort of ties into the next point for me, which is really about, you know, the challenge with most of the stuff in this space around circular economy and trying to sort of, you know, sustainability, there seems to be this sort of natural position where it needs to be more expensive for consumers or businesses to take on. And it needs to sort of look and feel in a certain way. And I'm a strong believer, I think you guys are as well as that, you know, we need to lead with positive impact and positive behaviours, with sort of brand propositions in market versus just being another player in the market. And I think I see that with what you're doing with great rep. From my point of view, in focusing on building great brand and consumer and business connection around purpose. Take us a bit about your thinking around that even from you also, the winemaking days, obviously, that that side of the thinking around connecting and delivering experience is critical. I gather as part of the growth journey, apart from all the fact that you need to build this infrastructure and go to market. You there's an important element around experience, both with customers as consumers or what we call conscious consumers and businesses, right?
Jordy Kay: 24:07
Yeah, exactly. I think it because we started this company is again, his way of channelling his anger and frustration at the world, and the lack of change, right? That was our sort of purpose. And, and so we didn't want to create like another wishy washy sort of thing that like is slightly more expensive. And is it solving a problem? I don't know. Like, you know, maybe it could create a nice sort of healthy income for Julia and myself. And we could buy a house in Bahrain and live the dream, but like, that wasn't really like, as much as I'd love to do that, that sort of, we still rent and I'm happy to keep renting so that we can serve our purpose here. And, and I think, you know, like for us, we saw like, there's like the world is going through a material revolution, as he mentioned, to build that hardware now. We've gone through this software evolution, and now we're changing hardware to reimagine the future with which changing hardware so that we can hit these 2030 2050 Carbon Net Zero targets, we're changing hardware so that we can travel faster and safer. And so what we're living through right now is this yes, this hardware sort of revolution. And I think it's really, it's driven by anger, it's driven, because people like, Well, I'm really pissed off that I'm like, we're still using coal, and I'm really pissed off that I'm still putting diesel in my car. And so I think like, for me, some of the greatest music and art was was came from periods of great sort of social and political oppression. And now we've had this, you know, environmental oppression driven by politicians and, and large organisation that has driven people to go, you know, nothing else, like, I'm going to do something about this. And, and that was sort of really the standpoint but Julio myself. And so I guess the way we sort of think about the company is is not about, I guess, trying to create, like a slightly better alternative. It's like, no, no, we need to completely, absolutely knock this out of the park. So that shell, British, British Petroleum, Exxon, all the manufacturers out there, they have to use PHA. For us, it's not about whether it's compostable, or biodegradable, we're trying to create a narrative that is PHA, or it's terrible. And so we really want sort of the world to shift to these new pipelines. We're not the only startup sort of in this space, but our sort of method is very, very different being that we're a manufacturer, or a sort of retailer, consumer object to consumer brand as well. So we're a lot of different things, and we have a complete vertical integration in our model. But really, it's about sort of trying to change the world, not trying to sort of just make a business for the sake of it. And I think you know, everything we do, you can kind of see that. And I guess you know, the culture, we put a lot of effort into the culture that we're trying to build internally at great rap, as well as the you know, what we're trying to give off externally. And, and we put so much effort into that, because I don't know if like Julia and I will be running the company five or 10 years from now. But we know that we want the company to exist 100 years from now, and still have this belief, this mission, and believe this purpose. So we're trying to build all of these, these sort of things isn't at the moment. So that does exist in the future. And Simon, you know, we wanted him as a mentor and an investor, because he does that as well, they've got a huge vision. And toilet paper is just the beginning. But their vision is that everyone can go to a safe and clean toilet everywhere in the world. And everyone has access to that because millions of people sadly died. And you know, it's a delicacy. And so
Nick Gonios: 27:41
represent, you know, yeah, and
Jordy Kay: 27:43
I think we're sort of trying to do that. And we really wanted them on board and Simon on board, as well, as a lot of our sort of angel investors, we have fun at the start, they will seem something similar to them in their DNA, they've got to build something, you know, and they're not just sort of, I guess, maybe invested in someone else's money investing now just to find out oh, god and really build something for themselves.
Nick Gonios: 28:04
Yep, that's right. That's so good. So I mean, just just getting closer to just time Yeah, I'm just just thinking out loud. One of the things that we haven't sort of touched on, which I'm actually just want to talk about is, you know, the challenges of our, you know, we're both in Australia, we are, you know, in the auto called the remotest modern economy in the world. And the challenge that goes with that is actually, we seem to have over the last three or four decades have sort of lost the opportunity or sort of given away the opportunity of building and having, you know, in a capacity of making and doing and of complex high value stuff. Right. And how has that impacted yourselves in terms of really sort of, you know, starting earlier or sooner or, or dealing with the challenges of not having a manufacturing base that could have been a value to your was that the object? Or is that the opportunity? Right, to reinvent it to reimagine it?
Jordy Kay: 28:58
Yeah, absolutely. I think like being in Australia, is slowly our company down by and say 12 months, we would be developed a lot faster if because of our geographical location. But I also don't see that as a bad thing, because being in Australia means Yeah, well, it's like isolated, little island would be gone. But we have to Akata for everything you have to like to solve, you know, supply chain issues, is a hell of a lot harder than trying to solve them if you're based in Europe or North America, and to solve mechanical issues, but none of our machinery obviously made in Australia, we have to import from Europe. So when you're importing these huge amounts of machines and all of the issues that come in with that as we just got charged with this crazy new bill this week, because they're now fumigating certain things distinct about an ad so that it brought with it a $20,000 bill because everything out of your name must be fumigated. Just think back to thought. And then also, you know, obviously There's a Global Freight issue at the moment. So there's all these huge challenges of being located in Australia. But the cool thing about it is obviously, with the tension between Australia and China at the moment because of these ocean freight issues, and because of, I think COVID Everyone wants to support locally made products. And the ability to support locally made products means that one, we're actually decarbonizing our manufacturing systems. Because if if everything was made locally, and we started to focus more on local solutions, we'll be importing and exporting a hell of a lot. And so it's really, really interesting to see this take form and like a post COVID world, once we're sort of locked down, like, like manufacturing in Australia has gone over 10% overnight, and so the other day, but in the last 12 months, it's absolutely exploded, and it's going to continue to explode, you look at any sort of recession are great incidents in history, you see that manufacturing, technology, innovation, they all just go through the roof after these sort of periods. And we're already starting to see that in the US. And in Europe, as they sort of come out of lockdown. And to procure new machinery. So working, we work with a variety of different machinery manufacturers, to procure new machinery at the moment is insanely challenging, because everyone wants to get all of their manufacturing out of out of China, and they want to focus on local solution. And that's happening all around the world, which is really, really exciting to see. So we're starting to see this like, yeah, revolution in manufacturing. And we're starting to see a lot more people sort of get excited about the space. And and I guess that poses challenges here in Australia, but for us, it poses a lot more opportunity, because all of these huge companies are saying, hey, we want us to sort of solve not only plastic waste in our supply chain, but the locate, look, you know, location of our manufacturing goods. So everyone's sort of reaching out to say, Yeah, look, we want to get a pallet rack that's made in Australia, we want our food packaging to be made. And, you know, we want everything we can to to be made locally. And and we plan to expand into the US and we plan to expand into the EU. And that's on the very near horizon. So we're really excited about that. But we're never going to be sending to the products back and forth, we're sort of again, focusing on those local solutions, using local waste. And then making sure that our products get to a local compost pile, even if it does get back into the environment, it'll still break down. But if we can get it back to a compost file, confer the compost pile can further add value down the chain. So I think like this kind of local solution is great. And Australia acts as amazing guinea pig for this,
Nick Gonios: 32:36
you acting and operating like a circular list without knowing it, which I'm so excited about. So is that and and it's very much on par with our circulars charter mission, we'll be launching sometime soon, which very much focuses on the three principles around local for local road, taking 100% responsibility right across the whole cycle, taking across areas 100% responsibility across all materials. And then the second big one is actually trying to drive net zero impact across you know, production and engineering and operations overall, right. So it's good to hear you talk about that, because I can see you guys taking off and going global sooner rather than later. But it's also in a way that actually executes it in some way where you're building a distributed micro factory service centre capabilities, sort of as closed loop systems within cities and in cities, right, servicing those needs is a massive opportunity. And I wish you guys sort of take that approach because I'm very much into seeing seeing more circular Silicon Valley in that sense. So Jody, might we've been talking a lot. It's been great. I can spend a whole day talking with you. But would you like to leave in close off with for our listeners or viewers in terms of great wrap mission? Where to next? Is circular economy? What is it that as a first time listener that might be listening to our podcast? What is it about, you know, great rep that you're looking at going forward and expanding and doing things? What would you like to wrap up with? What would you what are your final thoughts and comments you'd like to share?
Jordy Kay: 34:03
Yeah, look, I think I definitely really came to just sort of let everyone know that we've got you back, we've got a we've got a 10 year roadmap to manufacture the vast majority of Parliament's in the world using PHA and we've got some pretty exciting technology that's been sort of built in a dark, dark secret lab somewhere that really will change, change, change the face of tactics and, and we want people to know, there is hope. But we also want people to know that we do need help as well. So that takes, you know, a variety of different forms. If you're highly skilled and looking for a career change, then, you know, we encourage you to reach out because we're looking for great people to help build this company that's in Australia on board. And we're looking for businesses to work with, you know, if you use a lot of plastic and yeah, come to us as well. And if he does have either these and use it as a passionate composter or you're out there, just sort of really happy PETA see what's happening, then also, please reach out, like we're trying to sort of grow our community. And I think communities build bigger communities and, and together, you know, we can sort of do this. And you know, we've got a huge fight ahead of us. It is very much a David versus Goliath narrative here. And, and we're very aware of that. And so we need people to come on board via messenger. And you know, we're out there trying to do the best we can. And we'll forever try and do that. So we just need people to jump on board
Nick Gonios: 35:28
too early. But it's been it's been great having you on this podcast. So I'd like to thank you for joining me on the circle as quest. It's been great learning about your journey from winemaking to now tackling the massive plastics problem with great rep. So well for those of you who are interested in finding out more about Johnny, and keen on purchasing some of great reps products, you can check out his profile on LinkedIn, or visit their website at Great rep.co or Instagram at great underscore rat. And I'm sure the team will be open to you know opportunities with more employees joining or more people purchasing their products in doing good for people and the planet, or collaborations and partnerships going forward. So on that night God thanks for coming and joining us on the surplus because podcast.
Jordy Kay: 36:17
Thank you so much for having me it was real joy to be here.
Nick Gonios: 36:23
At The Circulist Quest, we're always interested in stories about entrepreneurs, designers, engineers and scientists who are helping to accelerate the shift to the circular economy. If you now have someone we just have to talk to, or have any questions about the technology we're developing to help product manufacturers close the loop. Visit our website at Circulist.org or write to us at media@circulist.org
