Renewable energy contractor Solarsense has become the latest firm in the Bristol area to become owned by its employees after achieving its best-ever trading results.
The firm, which was launched nearly 30 years ago, has delivered over 15,000 installations in homes and businesses across the UK and taken solar into communities overseas as part of its charity work.
Growth has been rapid in recent years – last year it witnessed a 234% increase in sales inquiries, fuelling a subsequent surge in orders, while it has doubled its workforce over the past two years to 40 people. As a result, its six-month turnover came in at just under £10m.
Based in a new head office and warehouse in Clevedon, the firm designs and installs PV systems -with up to 85% of the business now linked to the commercial roof market.
Its clients range from owners of factories and warehouses to council buildings, community halls and leisure centres and in recent years have included Glastonbury Festival, household products firm Brabantia, the Duchy of Cornwall, UWE Bristol, the NHS, the RSPB, Tesco and socially conscious toiletries retailer Lush.
Rising electricity prices are also prompting more businesses to look at solar for energy security.
And with just 5% of commercial roofs in the UK having PV installations, the firm sees a strong market – one reason why it has switched to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) as this gives its growing team a stake in the company’s future as well as its current success.
According to managing director Stephen Barrett, pictured, the move was simply smart succession planning for a business that puts community and nature at its heart.
This effectively delivers benefits for all the team instead of them being accrued by shareholders, he said.
“We know we could have sold the company to a bigger business before we retired and we know some people might ask us why we didn’t at this point in our careers,” added Stephen, who made the decision with his recently retired business partner and company director Richard Simon.
“But it didn’t seem to sit right with Solarsense. The company might have ended up as the Bristol branch of a big corporate with a culture alien to the one we’ve created.
“A buyer could have taken us down the road of being a depot supplying small-scale domestic buildings, which was never our vision.
“They could just use our buildings and staff to do something else, changing the business completely. As soon as you relinquish control you risk losing everything you’ve worked to build.”
The firm has adopted a hybrid structure of employee ownership in which a controlling interest in the company has been transferred to an all-employee trust and held for the benefit of the team, with Stephen and Richard each retaining 12.5% of the business.
Stephen said this structure left the business more heavily reliant on the founders than the employees, who in turn know the founders retain a targeted incentive to grow the business and make it a success.
He added: “We sense a strong ambition that our employees see the opportunity we saw when we started to grow Solarsense – a company that can be a force for good while creating a sustainable, strong livelihood, instead of a company just after the endless pursuit of high profit and a quick sell on.”
