Lanchester Wines story
by Lanchester Wines
The Lanchester Group includes Lanchester Wines, Lanchester Properties, Greencroft Bottling and Spicers of Hythe. We're an independent, family-owned business that strongly believes being carbon neutral is just the beginning. We believe every business has a duty of care to minimise its impact on the environment, which is why the Lanchester group of companies has worked tirelessly over the last decade to ensure sustainability is at our core. There is, unfortunately, no 'one size fits all' solution when it comes to sustainability and so we've invested considerably to identify which changes we can make to lessen our effect on our planet.
Our business' greatest opportunity to make a change is through minimising our reliance on fossil fuels. As such, we've invested over £8million in renewable heat and energy generation at our sites across the North East of England and today our business is powered almost completely by renewable wind and solar energy.
Our four wind turbines produce around 5.5million kWh (kilowatt hours) of clean, renewable electricity per year. We use around 42% of this electricity to run operations at our Greencroft Estate (including Lanchester Wines and Greencroft Bottling) with the remaining electricity - enough to power 800 three-bedroom homes - feeding into the National Grid for use within our local community.
We also have a 41 kilowatt solar array on the roof of Lanchester Wines' office complex, which is calculated to produce enough clean electricity to cover our day-to-day use. The chemical reactions which occur within solar panels are more efficient at cooler temperatures so County Durham's bright and sunny, yet rather chilly, weather is perfect for our solar panels.
As a business, we continue to make choices about our long-term sustainability which go above and beyond both legislation and common practice. We are pioneering world-changing heat pump technology using water from disused mines at our warehouses in Gateshead.
Our two 'Open Loop Water Source Heat Pumps' have a combined capacity of 4mW (4million Watts) of heat. We are currently heating 33,445m2 (360,000 ft2) of warehouse, maintaining an ambient temperature perfect for storage of wine.
This technology not only enables our customers to further reduce their carbon footprint, but also revolutionise how clean technology may be used in former mining areas across the world. We also understand saving energy is just as important as generating it and have implemented a number of practices across our estate, which has resulted in around £40,000 savings a year.
Useful learnings from Lanchester Wines
Sustainable wine growing makes people think of vineyards filled with colourful wildflowers, birds, soil teeming with life. But this is just one aspect of a sustainable vineyard and winery operation. In reality, a sustainable approach to winemaking should consider (at the very least) the health and biodiversity of the vineyard; water usage (both in the vineyard and winery); energy consumption and source; plastic usage; and the overall carbon footprint of the grape-growing, winemaking and transport process.
Lanchester Wines metrics
Sustainable wine sales
Carbon footprint
