Breaking down the barriers: how biomass SME specialist Artizan met the National Trust
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16th March 2015
With more than 300 historic buildings and 250,000 hectares of land to look after, Britain’s largest charity the National Trust, spends more than £6 million each year heating and powering the places in its care.
To help reduce its energy bills and invest more in vital conservation work around the country, the National Trust has set itself ambitious targets to use 20 per cent less energy, halve its fossil fuel use and generate 50 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
It’s an opportunity not lost on Keith Allen, head of technical sales at Berkshire-based renewable energy installer Artizan Heating. The last two years has seen the National Trust embark on a £3.5 million clean energy pilot, which if successful could see it invest 10 times this amount on renewable technologies to help power its properties.
One of the five properties in the National Trust green retrofit pilot, is Ickworth House in Suffolk, which is installing a 300 kilowatt biomass boiler that will provide the estate with 100 per cent of its heating needs.
“We fit heat pumps and solar thermal, but biomass – in its various forms – is over 95 per cent of our work,” Allen explains, adding: “Biomass fits nicely into the National Trust’s property portfolio, and we know how to integrate modern technology into older buildings.”
But spotting an opportunity is one thing; converting it into a sale is quite another. For a small business that turns over £1 million and has half a dozen employees, one of the challenges for Artizan is how to get in front of the right buyers so it can compete fairly against larger contractors.
The Institute for Sustainability’s RE:Start Local was launched to address this type of obstacle. RE:Start Local has spent the last two years working with large buyers and investors in the South East to understand their requirements and the business opportunities they offer and then share this information with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the region’s renewable energy and retrofit markets.
Artizan is one of the small businesses that has participated in RE:Start Local to benefit from free support to SMEs in the six sub–regions of Hampshire, Kent, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Reading/East Berkshire and Sussex.
In Reading and East Berkshire, renewable energy consultant TV Energy was able to set up a number of buyer sessions for Artizan, including a ‘Meet the Buyer’ with Reading Borough Council and workshops with the National Trust.
“We found all the sessions very interesting, but the most useful were the workshops with the National Trust. These were very productive and enabled us to get to know people in that organisation. As a result, we’ve been to see the National Trust on two or three occasions and been able to put together various proposals,” says Allen.
Though no deal has come out of the meetings yet, Allen is in no doubt business growth has resulted from the programme and is looking forward to developing opportunities further.
“I would do it all again. It was a positive experience,” he says.
Through RE:Start Local, the Institute worked in partnership with B&E Group, Crawley Borough Council, Milton Keynes Council, National Energy Foundation, Reading Borough Council, West Sussex Sustainable Business Partnership, MTW, TV Bio Energy and TV Energy.
Completed in December 2014, the project was part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
It’s an opportunity not lost on Keith Allen, head of technical sales at Berkshire-based renewable energy installer Artizan Heating. The last two years has seen the National Trust embark on a £3.5 million clean energy pilot, which if successful could see it invest 10 times this amount on renewable technologies to help power its properties.
One of the five properties in the National Trust green retrofit pilot, is Ickworth House in Suffolk, which is installing a 300 kilowatt biomass boiler that will provide the estate with 100 per cent of its heating needs.
“We fit heat pumps and solar thermal, but biomass – in its various forms – is over 95 per cent of our work,” Allen explains, adding: “Biomass fits nicely into the National Trust’s property portfolio, and we know how to integrate modern technology into older buildings.”
But spotting an opportunity is one thing; converting it into a sale is quite another. For a small business that turns over £1 million and has half a dozen employees, one of the challenges for Artizan is how to get in front of the right buyers so it can compete fairly against larger contractors.
The Institute for Sustainability’s RE:Start Local was launched to address this type of obstacle. RE:Start Local has spent the last two years working with large buyers and investors in the South East to understand their requirements and the business opportunities they offer and then share this information with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the region’s renewable energy and retrofit markets.
Artizan is one of the small businesses that has participated in RE:Start Local to benefit from free support to SMEs in the six sub–regions of Hampshire, Kent, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Reading/East Berkshire and Sussex.
In Reading and East Berkshire, renewable energy consultant TV Energy was able to set up a number of buyer sessions for Artizan, including a ‘Meet the Buyer’ with Reading Borough Council and workshops with the National Trust.
“We found all the sessions very interesting, but the most useful were the workshops with the National Trust. These were very productive and enabled us to get to know people in that organisation. As a result, we’ve been to see the National Trust on two or three occasions and been able to put together various proposals,” says Allen.
Though no deal has come out of the meetings yet, Allen is in no doubt business growth has resulted from the programme and is looking forward to developing opportunities further.
“I would do it all again. It was a positive experience,” he says.
Through RE:Start Local, the Institute worked in partnership with B&E Group, Crawley Borough Council, Milton Keynes Council, National Energy Foundation, Reading Borough Council, West Sussex Sustainable Business Partnership, MTW, TV Bio Energy and TV Energy.
Completed in December 2014, the project was part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
