DK Europe's Mark Wilkinson spoke to us about his experience with applying for Low Carbon Challenge Fund grant funding.
Please introduce yourself.
Hi, I’m Mark Wilkinson, representing DK Europe and our brand Mirabella. My job role is Managing Director.
What investments did you put the money from your Low Carbon Challenge Fund grant towards?
We put the money towards 46 solar panels and an invertor, which generates about 19,000 kilowatt hours per annum.
How do you expect the solar panels to financially benefit your business?
Extremely well. Anything we don’t use gets sold back to the grid at 15p per kilowatt hour, and it’s drastically reduced our energy consumption.
And how straightforward was the application process for receiving your grant funding?
It was extremely easy – it was literally a matter of just filling in a questionnaire and sending in 3 quotes; I think the whole process took about 3 to 4 weeks and we got the funds.
Did you find the match funding to be affordable?
Absolutely! The payback period is about 1 or 2 years in terms of what you need to put into the process yourself, so it isn’t a strain. You’ll be saving more money overall in that time. And for us, it’s incredibly valuable as I believe after 25 years, the solar panels we bought are still roughly 90% effective.
We actually went over the 25% expected match funding to maximise the amount of panels we could install on top of fixed costs like hiring scaffolding, but even then, that was still affordable for us.
Would you recommend the Low Carbon Challenge Fund to other businesses?
I definitely would. It’s a no-brainer!
Learn more about the Low Carbon Challenge Fund and how to express your interest.