WITH a knack for making use of apparently useless things, David Pike, a 59-year-old engineer, found his inspiration in a pile of compost. He had spent two decades working at waste-to-energy plants, which turned every- thing from spoiled food to animal waste into electricity.
So when friends asked him to find a way to turn wood scraps and tree trimmings from their garden centres into something other than landfill waste, he had a few ideas.
That was six years ago. O-Gen, the start-up firm based on the wood-to-electricity technology he developed, has now built power stations in Stoke-on-Trent and Derby. The first, in Stoke, generates enough power for 6,000 homes and is, Pike says, 20% more efficient than rival wood-burning plants.
It has not been an easy ride. Pike had planned to buy in the machinery for O-Gen’s first plant but found that much of the equipment was not up to the job. “That was a blow but, although we are a small team, we are all engineers so we set about designing and completing the facility ourselves,” said Pike. “From that we have four or five applications for patents going through the system.”
The Staffordshire firm was forced to re-engineer virtually every step of its process for burning the shredded wood in a low oxygen environment, cleaning the gas released and adapting the engines.
Advertisement
“From finding out that the process we had bought did not work, we had to refinance, design and build our own version, which took a great deal of time and effort,” said Pike. “When we started this business, between 7m and 11m tonnes of waste timber was reportedly produced each year in the UK. Most of it was sent to landfill, while the cleaner timber was turned into chipboard.
“This conversion saves an estimated 170,000 tonnes a year of greenhouse gas emissions compared with this material being sent to landfill,” said Pike.
O-Gen faced challenges outside the workshop when talks with a potential investor collapsed at the last minute. Pike credits his chairman David Nairn, a former Barclays executive, for securing a £3m investment from Foresight, a venture-capital group, within weeks of the earlier deal falling apart. “That was when I found that some bankers do work very hard. David is a real grafter,” said Pike.
O-Gen has now secured its third contract to build a plant for the outsourcing company Mitie in Plymouth.
Pike intends to upgrade the Stoke plant later this year while working on securing contracts for a handful of new facilities. “If we can produce two or three plants a year, I’m sure everyone will be very happy, but we won’t stand still on technology,” he said. “We are always looking for something new to develop.”