Looking back to 2011, what made the UK market the right next step for our international expansion, and how did you approach positioning the company there?
The UK made sense for a few reasons: Some of the other international (non-German) markets had either stopped or slowed down — Spain, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy. I hoped the UK market would take off as a next step, but that was far from certain as several market reforms (consultations) were underway. Once those began to look positive, and a Feed-in Tariff and eventually a Renewable Obligation Credit market evolved, I spent a lot of time in the UK – meeting with developers and investors, looking at land, meeting consultants, and subcontractors, trying to understand the market. My director at the time, Matthias Lienekampf, also stood behind and participated in many of these efforts – we spent a lot of time together!
With more than 330 MWp of projects built at the time, what were the key success factors that enabled us to establish such a strong footprint in the UK so quickly?
GOLDBECK (the larger GOLDBECK Group) had a subsidiary in Milton Keynes, so we were able to use that entity for contracting, simplifying the process and leveraging some of that administrative history; language – my English is decent and that of the other colleagues was even better; track record – GOLDBECK was one of a few EPCs with a deep track record; bankability – similar to track record, GOLDBECK had a solid balance sheet and was viewed favorably by the banks, etc. involved in financing; most importantly – people! We had a team that was hungry to do international projects (Matthias Lienekampf, Tobias Schuessler, Joachim Goldbeck, etc.), and we were not afraid to dig into the contractual, permitting, engineering, logistical, challenges.
Momentum also played a huge role. The first project we built was a 500 kWp rooftop in Bradford. At the time, it was one of the largest projects in the UK. Once we had that under our belt, we were quickly one of the top EPCs with the market and project sizes expanding by the month for over 5 years.
The Lackford project even won the award for the best large-scale PV plant in the UK. What does this achievement represent to you personally and for the company’s journey overall?
We built that project for Low Carbon with Maquarie providing the financing. It received its final permits in December and needed to be constructed, connected before the end of March. So – it was a big rush to contract and deliver. At the time, GOLDBECK International (part of the building group — GOLDBECK GmbH) had to sign off on the contracts; Matthias Lienekampf crashed the Christmas party in Bielefeld to obtain signatures – he will not let me forget this. The project stood out as it was large (for the time, 20 MWp?), and it was uniquely rectangular. I remember discussing it with Tobias Schuessler and Marcel Stoeber and seeing their excitement over the optimization potential – quadratisch, praktisch, gut. From there, the project management team (led by Carlos Gomez) ran with engineering, execution and connection.
The award meant that our efforts had paid off – we had created a team and structure that could deliver some of the best energy projects in the world. And – we could deliver these within very short timelines and for some of the biggest investors in the world.
Colin Deans is currently responsible for the UK market and shares the following perspective on its relevance:
Since re-entering the UK market in 2022 we have managed to build strong relationships with key clients such as Next Energy Capital and Octopus Energy, successfully building multiple sites for each. The past 3 years has seen steady growth for us and has set the foundations for Goldbeck Solar as a key player in the EPC market. With the experience we have gained from building some challenging projects with our partners and developing our team, of which has grown from 2 to nearly 30 direct employees in the UK, and is still growing. We now position ourselves to consider a variety of projects, from CFD projects which have their own special requirements, private wire projects and NSIP/DCO projects for the future. One of our proudest achievements is building the team of people that we have, all very dedicated and developing as a team all the time. We very much look forward to seeing the UK market prosper over the coming years.
