Soft-fruit firm invests in solar installation

East Anglian soft-fruit grower Place UK has invested a six-figure sum in a new 800-panel solar installation that will cut its energy bills by an estimated £30,000 a year.

The new ground-mounted solar field, installed by energy company EvoEnergy, is expected reduce the firm’s carbon footprint by almost 100 tonnes a year at its 900-acre farm.

“We’d looked at other renewables options but wind turbines weren’t right for us and AD plants were too expensive,” said Place UK finance director, James Starling. “PV was still a significant investment but it fitted the bill as an affordable option – and given that we knew we’d use all of the electricity ourselves it also mitigated against some of the risk of future energy price rises.

“When our factory’s not running our cold stores still use a base load of energy. With the extra PV that base load can now be powered entirely from solar power and that’s a real breakthrough for us. Our energy supply is more secure and our carbon footprint’s been reduced. The whole project ran extremely well from start to finish.”

In total, the company now has 280 kWp of solar generation on site, generating an estimated £30,000 per year in returns from the government’s Feed-in Tariff (FiT).

Place UK supplies fresh and frozen raspberries, strawberries and blackberries to retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer.

Having doubled in size since 2009, the company’s operations now include two blast-freeze tunnels, cold storage and dry goods stores, which are used 24-hours-a-day and consume 3 million kWh of electricity each year.

Peter Alder, head of sales and marketing for EvoEnergy, said: “The business model run by Place UK, one with strong historical roots in British agricultural food production, lends itself perfectly to being able to reap the rewards of solar.

“For a firm like Place UK that’s demonstrated impressive growth to date and has ambitions for more of the same in future, securing its energy supply through renewables made sense financially as well as environmentally.”