Lead Manufacturer Set to Reap Sustainable Rewards with Solar Roofs

MIDLAND LEAD has invested around £230,000 to gain sustainable rewards through installing solar energy and energy saving measures.

Renewable energy experts, Cactus Energy completed the installation of 569 solar panels across a 1,102m² area of roofs at Midland Lead’s specialist manufacturing site in South Derbyshire. They also replaced £40,000 of lighting systems, including LED and motion sensitive technology, installed by Norwood Electrical.

The investment will make Midland Lead 24% more self-sufficient in its electricity intake and usage, reducing its environmental impact as a high energy use manufacturer.

The solar system is forecast to generate 210,000kWh of clean, green energy and is projected to offset almost 49 tons of CO₂ each year. The CO₂ savings are equivalent to driving a car 121,000 miles, burning 27 tons of coal or charging almost 6 million smart phones.

Starting in May 2022, the project took six months to plan, design and install completing in November. The logistics and manufacturing facilities remained operational throughout the installation.

Sustainable Rewards

Mark Winchester, Financial Controller at Midland Lead, said: “This is another exciting step towards progressing our long-term sustainability plans which are to eventually operate at net zero. We are delighted with our progress so far and following this successful installation we are now looking to fit more solar panels across more of the Midland Lead infrastructure.”

Kyle Hazeldine, Sales and Marketing Manager at Midland Lead, explained that the company has a substantial area of its 13-acre site presently unused that could be utilised as a solar farm, with ultimate aim to meet all of the business’s energy requirement from its own solar generation and feed any surplus energy back into the national grid.

Kyle said, “As a relatively small business with 15 employees and still family owned, we’re proud to make this kind of investment in sustainability. We’ve just taken delivery of all electric fork lifts, which we’ll now be able to charge from our own site-generated electricity.

“Lead is a 100% recycled product from scrap lead sourced in Britain, so to make its recycling process fully self-sustaining will just complete the circle and provide us with a carbon neutral future.”

Midland Lead’s solar investment is projected to achieve a short pay-back period of less than three years.

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