Another year older, another year wiser?... From reflection to action on Pineapple Day

"Another year older, another year wiser." This familiar phrase felt particularly apt last month as we celebrated Pineapple Day. What started as a nod to International Pineapple Day and London Climate Action Week has blossomed into a cherished tradition… a proxy birthday for our company. It's a pivotal moment to pause, reflect, and align with the seasons in the northern hemisphere. As we reach the midpoint of the year, we're not just celebrating, we're taking stock, seeing the fruits of our activities, and charting the course for what we need to grow into the future.

This year's Pineapple Day was our biggest yet, and the energy in the room was palpable. The message of the evening was powerfully spurred on by the wonderful Lord Deben, a formidable agent for change who has successfully shifted systems from within. His message was simple, direct, and galvanising: we need unwavering commitment and action. It’s not enough to believe in change; we must wake up every morning and consciously do something to make it happen.

How fitting, then, that moments before he spoke, we had officially put that very principle into practice.

Fireside chat with Lord Deben on Pineapple Day 2025

From Homes to Buildings: Launching Pineapple CoRE

We were thrilled to formally launch Pineapple CoRE, our second major venture, with our formidable founding partners: Signify, Schneider Electric, and Atlas Copco. CoRE builds directly on the foundational work of our first venture, Pineapple Homes—whose cornerstones were laid by British Gas, NatWest, and Places for People—which tackles the decarbonisation of homes. This time, with Pineapple CoRE, we are targeting the ambitious decarbonisation of one million commercial buildings in the coming years. We have already made a fast start, with more big news and significant commitments to be announced in the second half of 2025.

L-R: Clark Morrow (Signify), Rupert Snuggs (Pineapple), Nico van der Merwe (Signify), Richard Bennett (Atlas Copco), Andy Dewis (Pineapple) and Andy McKenzie (Schneider Electric). Photo credit: Signify.

Sharing the ‘How’: Our Playbook for Partnership

Alongside this new venture, we also released our latest thinking in our second paper, 'Making Partnerships Work: A Playbook for Sustainable Growth'. This paper is the natural successor to our first, 'The Partnership Era', and dives deep into the 'how'—exploring the mechanics of making collaborative business models work and, more importantly, how to scale them to deliver tangible, widespread impact. Our report breaks down how partnerships evolve over time and the sorts of partnerships that are required as models scale and grow. 

So, with the spirit of commitment in our hearts, the energy of 150 friends and colleagues celebrating with us, and a shared desire to take action, we are left with one big question… Where do we commit our efforts next?

Where can we have the biggest impact, and who will be the next brave set of partners to make a leap with us?

Where do we commit our efforts next?

As part of our report we further defined the partners that we were looking to collaborate with in order to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future, we are looking for visionary leaders, system thinkers, master executors and agile mobilisers to help us to achieve our mission of doing more, faster, together to accelerate the transition to a sustainable future. 

To answer this, we have launched a series of Imagine Labs. These are dedicated explorations into the breakthrough areas where our partnership models can create the sustainability markets of tomorrow. We are actively diving into critical domains like nature recovery, agricultural transition, circularity, energy systems, and identifying other areas for collaborative business models within positive tipping points. Our goal is to find where we can most rapidly accelerate the transition to a sustainable future for all.

Our Pineapple Day celebration was a moment to look back with pride, but more importantly, to look forward with purpose. Lord Deben’s call for commitment and action is not just a mantra; it is our roadmap.

The journey continues, and we extend an open invitation to all who share our vision to join us in building it.

Share your partnership story and let’s continue the conversation here to do more, faster, together.