Green growth: RE:Start Local gives Oxford Renewables supply chain boost
24th February 2015
Oxford Renewables faces a challenge familiar to many small businesses that want to grow: how to successfully break into the public sector supply chain?
Ben Carter, commercial director at Oxford Renewables, describes it as the SME’s “inferiority complex”.
“Every year, we’d look at our business plan and feel, while we were getting commercial customers, we didn’t have a strategic relation with local councils,” he explains. “We needed to build up understanding and improve skills and win business with them.”
Oxford Renewables was set up in 2008 by renewable energy engineer Jim Dowling and organic farmer James Norman. The main driver for the company’s launch was the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive, which pays homes and businesses for every kilowatt of renewable heat they produce. The big turning point for the company, based near Reading, Berkshire, though, came when it moved from being an installer to also supplying kit – teaming up with SOLARFOCUS, an Austrian biomass and solar thermal technology company as its UK distributor. The move propelled Oxford Renewables from being a small-time installer with half a dozen installations to one that now operates a network of installers, has six full-time staff, and has more than 150 installations to its name.
RE:Start Local
“Every year, we’d look at our business plan and feel, while we were getting commercial customers, we didn’t have a strategic relation with local councils,” he explains. “We needed to build up understanding and improve skills and win business with them.”
Oxford Renewables was set up in 2008 by renewable energy engineer Jim Dowling and organic farmer James Norman. The main driver for the company’s launch was the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive, which pays homes and businesses for every kilowatt of renewable heat they produce. The big turning point for the company, based near Reading, Berkshire, though, came when it moved from being an installer to also supplying kit – teaming up with SOLARFOCUS, an Austrian biomass and solar thermal technology company as its UK distributor. The move propelled Oxford Renewables from being a small-time installer with half a dozen installations to one that now operates a network of installers, has six full-time staff, and has more than 150 installations to its name.
RE:Start Local
The decision to get onto the radar of local councils was a strategic one taken by the business just over a year ago. It neatly coincided with an approach by award-winning renewable energy consultants TV Bio Energy, which was looking for participants for an initiative called RE:Start Local. Led by the Institute for Sustainability, RE:Start Local was set up to help SMEs secure supply chain and innovation opportunities in the growing renewable energy and low carbon building retrofit markets in the South East.
“It was as if the stars were aligning for us. RE:Start Local meant we could get in front of the right people and win new business with local councils,” says Carter.
TV Bio Energy is one of five partners that delivered free support to SMEs in the six south east sub–regions of Hampshire, Kent, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Reading/East Berkshire and Sussex. RE:Start activities included workshops and one-to-one support.
In the case of Oxford Renewables that included two ‘Meet the Buyer’ sessions – one with the West Berkshire Council officers in Newbury and another with Oxford City Council.
“The sessions really helped demystify the process,” says Carter, who adds: “We now know who the gatekeepers and decision-makers are, and we’ve also built up goodwill and we know they want to work with us.”
Crucially, the programme which ended in December, also helped to drive sales for the SME. Although it recently narrowly missed out on a job with West Berkshire Council, Oxford Renewables is waiting to hear on a solar thermal bid for a leisure centre owned by Oxford City Council, and is about to bid for its first Academy School renewable heat project.
“We’ve learnt a lot and improved our systems and we’re on the verge of delivering new sales,” says Carter.
The RE:Start Local project worked in partnership with B&E Group, Crawley Borough Council, Milton Keynes Council, MTW, National Energy Foundation, Reading Borough Council, TV Bio Energy, TV Energy and West Sussex Sustainable Business Partnership, .
The project was part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
“It was as if the stars were aligning for us. RE:Start Local meant we could get in front of the right people and win new business with local councils,” says Carter.
TV Bio Energy is one of five partners that delivered free support to SMEs in the six south east sub–regions of Hampshire, Kent, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Reading/East Berkshire and Sussex. RE:Start activities included workshops and one-to-one support.
In the case of Oxford Renewables that included two ‘Meet the Buyer’ sessions – one with the West Berkshire Council officers in Newbury and another with Oxford City Council.
“The sessions really helped demystify the process,” says Carter, who adds: “We now know who the gatekeepers and decision-makers are, and we’ve also built up goodwill and we know they want to work with us.”
Crucially, the programme which ended in December, also helped to drive sales for the SME. Although it recently narrowly missed out on a job with West Berkshire Council, Oxford Renewables is waiting to hear on a solar thermal bid for a leisure centre owned by Oxford City Council, and is about to bid for its first Academy School renewable heat project.
“We’ve learnt a lot and improved our systems and we’re on the verge of delivering new sales,” says Carter.
The RE:Start Local project worked in partnership with B&E Group, Crawley Borough Council, Milton Keynes Council, MTW, National Energy Foundation, Reading Borough Council, TV Bio Energy, TV Energy and West Sussex Sustainable Business Partnership, .
The project was part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
To find out more about the RE:Start Local programme visit http://instituteforsustainability.co.uk.
