Opinion

Two minutes with Treco

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Q: Who are you?
Gordon Traill, founder and md of the national biomass boiler company Treco. I’m also a Tenant Farmer on a 350 acre Farm on the National Trust’s Killerton Estate in Devon.

Q: What do you do? Treco designs, supplies, installs, commissions and maintains biomass boiler heating systems nationwide. We have completed in excess of 600 since we started in 2005, mostly to commercial customers.

Q: Where are you? Based in Devon, Treco operates nationally and we have literally installed biomass boiler heating systems from the Shetlands to southernmost Cornwall.

Q: How’s business at the moment? Hectic, we’re right in the middle of the busiest heating season since we started

Q: How could it be better? For the last three years we have been growing more than 70 percent per annum which makes managing the business very challenging.

Q: Who do you admire in renewables? I was very impressed with Stewart Boyle’s new book A Sleeping Giant Awakens, very thought provoking look at the biomass industry.

Q: What’s the best business advice you’ve ever been given? There are two main best bits of advice I’ve been given. Once was to carefully cost and appraise any new investment opportunity, which has stuck with me. I believe that you need to employ clever and highly qualified people, but this does not always mean that they are right.

Q: How are you going green? I have installed a biomass boiler system on my farm which heats a listed thatched farmhouse, farm offices, workshops and a pie factory. I also plan to install PV at the farm and offices.