All the employees at our Stapleton site and any visitors to Dovecote Park in the last few weeks will no doubt have noticed a new addition to the landscape as they entered the grounds, in the form of a 50m high wind turbine, which is now fully operational and providing a significant portion of our energy needs!

With over 650 staff, state of the art technology and a busy factory environment, the electricity costs here at Dovecote Park have always been among our biggest overheads, and this has increased even more since our last expansion programme. We are always looking to conduct business in a greener and more efficient manner, and for a while have been researching viable options for renewable energy sources, eventually settling on the idea of harvesting energy from a wind turbine.

The turbine was erected towards the end of June, and has been fully operational since July 24th. We have already seen the benefits of the electricity it generates, equating to approximately 20% of our overall usage. As well as directly benefiting us through cost reduction, the turbine considerably reduces our carbon footprint as a business.

Peter Boyes, Business Systems Director says, “We have a commitment to Waitrose to reduce our carbon footprint in the long term and not only will this help in this respect to the tune of 950 tonnes per year but also saves money as the electricity it provides costs less than the power provided by the National Grid. We all now have to hope that it stays windy!”