Labour donor Dale Vince’s enterprise empire swung to a loss after it suffered a £12m writedown on a “vegan fuel” mission and international power costs plunged.
Accounts for the power tycoon’s holding firm, Inexperienced Britain Group, confirmed it fell to a £7m loss within the 12 months to April in contrast with a revenue earlier than tax of virtually £50m a 12 months earlier.
Inexperienced Britain Group is solely owned by Mr Vince and incorporates his enterprise pursuits together with Ecotricity, the power provider he based in 1995, the lab-grown diamond firm Skydiamond and Forest Inexperienced Rovers, a vegan soccer membership.
The group’s hunch into the purple was partially triggered by a £12m writedown on Ecotricity’s inexperienced fuel mill in Studying, which was opened in 2023, after it suffered engineering and design failures.
So-called vegan fuel is made utilizing grass cuttings, fairly than animal waste, which is damaged down by anaerobic digestion to create methane.
Mr Vince has championed the scheme, saying two years in the past: “We estimate that if we develop grass on all of the marginal land in Britain, we’ll have the ability to make sufficient inexperienced fuel to provide your complete nation.”
Ecotricity has since needed to fully scrap its first biogas plant however is planning a brand new facility which it stated may present fuel to a number of thousand properties.
“A [new] facility is underneath growth and … will produce biomethane through anaerobic digestion, utilizing grass from the native space as the first feedstock,” stated the report.
The mission is at present in a pre-construction section, and is due for completion in 2026.”
Revenues from promoting electrical energy and fuel got here to £467m in the course of the 12 months, a pointy drop from £551m a 12 months earlier when revenues included £123m of presidency subsidies to assist prospects by way of the power disaster.
The report stated: “The Authorities beforehand stepped in to mitigate the impression of upper wholesale costs on customers. This assist has wound down throughout monetary 12 months 2024 as costs stabilised, albeit to greater than historic common costs.”
The decline in power costs noticed the corporate’s revenue from authorities power invoice subsidies plummet to £8m, down from £123m in the course of the prior 12 months.
The accounts come after a Excessive Court docket choice earlier this month that dominated Mr Vince’s ex-wife Kate be awarded greater than £40m in a divorce settlement.
Legal professionals for Mr Vince’s ex-wife instructed the courtroom he was making a gift of matrimonial belongings, of which she must be entitled to half, together with £5.4m in donations to the Labour Social gathering.
Mr Vince based the power agency Ecotricity in 1995 after rigging up an previous pylon to a wind-powered phone at Glastonbury.