Celebrating 10 years of heating homes and business in East Anglia

Attleborough-based renewable heating expert Finn Geotherm, is celebrating 10 successful years of installing ground and air source heat pumps across the region.

Established in 2006 by David Alston, Finn Geotherm is the UK’s only approved installer of Lampoassa heat pumps, which are made in Finland. David, who is half Finnish himself, spotted the opportunity to bring this technology to the UK and set up Finn Geotherm to do just that, utilising his degree in Engineering. David ran the business part-time while he worked shifts in an engineering role in the food industry. It quickly became clear that the skills needed from subcontractors to install heat pumps weren’t available in the UK so David took everything in-house to start building a reputation for Finn Geotherm as the renewable heating experts. The business quickly grew and soon became a full-time job.

David was joined in 2009 by commercial director Guy Ransom. The pair met over an air source installation at Guy’s home. Guy quickly recognised the great potential of Finn Geotherm and, with a background in corporate finance, was well placed to help drive the business forward to where it is today. The company has not missed a single sales target in the past seven years and has achieved just under 40% growth annually since then.

In the past 10 years, the company has gone from a team of three installing 10kW heat pumps to 20 staff installing 350kW systems. Other key milestones from the past 10 years include:

• 600+ projects installed to date for all types of building, from churches and cottages to offices and even the zoo.
• A total of around 600km of ground loop installed – enough to reach from Finn Geotherm’s offices in Attleborough to Edinburgh!
• Secured £10m in Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) payments for customers
• 12MW of heating has been installed for customers
• By switching to ground and air source, in the past year alone, Finn Geotherm has saved 24MWh of heating energy and around 16,000 metric tonnes of C02.

David Alston, technical director at Finn Geotherm, said:

“Although heat pump technology has been around for more than 150 years (the first large scale ground source heat pump was installed in 1945 for Norwich City Council’s electrical department), it’s still relatively new in the UK. When I set up Finn Geotherm ten years ago, I could see the great potential of renewable energy and felt passionately that this was the best, most sustainable technology for heating and hot water. Finn Geotherm has continued to grow as more and more consumers and businesses recognise the fantastic benefits delivered by heat pumps.”

Guy Ransom, commercial director at Finn Geotherm, said:

“We are delighted to be celebrating our 10th anniversary in 2016 and what a year it’s been. We’ve been shortlisted for more than 10 awards and have scooped the titles of Rural Enterprise of the Year in the EDP Business Awards and Small Business of the Year in the Chamber of Commerce Awards eastern heats and been made a member of Future50. We have a great team on board here at Finn Geotherm who have completed a hundreds of innovative, highly efficient and money-saving heat pump systems for customers across the region. It is an exciting time to be in this industry and we’re certainly looking forward to the next 10 years!”

To read more about Finn Geotherm’s decade in heat pumps, take a look at Renewable Energy Installer’s profile on the business.