Our idea was too good to waste
KEITH O’connor and his wife Anne had to ‘sell everything’ in 2002 to set up a firm turning industrial waste into green fuel.
A second home, a collection of vintage cars and even the family motors were sold as Keith, 43, and Anne, 40, started their firm.
The gamble paid off and Fleetsolve, in Thornton Hough, the Wirral, now has a turnover of £7.5million and 27 staff, having taken on seven people this year.
Keith says: ‘When we began, the technology we were bringing to the market was brand new. We sold everything we had to fund research and development and began the firm from our house.’
Many firms burn solid biomass – typically wood chips or waste wood – for heating and hot water. But Keith, who has spent years in engineering, set out to make units turning industrial clients’ waste – such as pharmaceutical firms’ or slaughterhouses end-ofproduction residues or solvents – into fuel to provide them with heating, hot water and cooling.
Anne says: ‘We love working together. I deal with the financial side and Keith has the ideas, which I help to make tangible.’ Fleetsolve has completed projects with organisations such as Tesco, Full Sutton Prison in East Yorkshire and the Radisson Blu Hotel at East Midlands Airport.
The couple subcontract work to local firms and factories. ‘All firms we work with are in 50 miles of each other. We are consistent in using their capacity, ’ says Keith.
Despite the euro crisis, they want to expand on the Continent. Keith says: ‘Countries are waking up to sustainability. There are real opportunities.’
Fleetsolve is the latest entrant in Financial Mail’s Made in Britain contest, which celebrates successful and diverse small and medium British manufacturers.
For full details see fmwf.com.