British golf trolley manufacturer Stewart Golf has now added solar energy to its green credentials and flicked the switch on a £40,000 installation to make it more than self-sufficient in electricity.

The company bought and moved into a brand new £1m, 10,000sq ft facility in Gloucester in April 2017 after 13 years at its original location just seven miles away. It moved its recycling and waste disposal contract because the new supplier offered a waste-to-energy service that guaranteed “zero to landfill” and then started looking at how it could make its energy consumption greener too.

The answer was 178 photovoltaic (PV) panels fitted to the roof of the Stewart Golf factory and offices by MyPower, another Gloucestershire company. The system delivers 46,000kWh of electricity a year, which means 15 tonnes of carbon emissions are being saved too.

Excess power produced by the panels is fed back into the power grid, adding revenue to the benefits to the company of making the move.

Mark Stewart, Stewart Golf CEO, said: “We’re very proud that our new PV system will be generating clean electricity for our business for many years to come. Not only is it a great green decision, it’s also a very sensible financial one as well so really is a win/win for us.

“Owning our own building means we can make long term investment decisions. Going solar self-sufficient reduces our carbon footprint and helps generate green power to go back into the grid, plus in the long term it becomes an income stream for us.”

2018 was another record year for Stewart Golf, with 6% growth bucking the trend across golf. It became a net exporter for the first time and more growth is planned for 2019: TV advertising on the Golf Channel in the USA is scheduled to begin in Spring alongside other marketing activity.