Teesside business looking at ways to save money on energy as costs double
We are hearing from a business in Teesside who say they are having to look at different ways to save money due to high energy bills.
It comes as the price cap is going up by 1.2 percent in January. Regulator Ofgem says it is due to the on-going conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Barry Hutchinson runs Hutchinson Hobbs Farm Shop in Yarm and he said: "In the last year we've had a few challenges along with every other business in the country, with the Ukraine crisis, the cost of fuel and energy went through the roof. Our energy bill was going from £28,000 to about £70,000 a year, so that was a big challenge and at the same time with the wage rises and everything else.
"Mainly our costs went through the roof and you can't really pass those costs directly onto the consumer straight away. You have to try and filter it through a little bit over time, so that's put a quite a lot of pressure on us.
"As soon as we knew that year, we're responsibly forward thinking so we really pushed and pushed and pushed to try and get more customers through the door. We knew that customers didn't have as much disposable income as their energy prices were going up, so we managed to get more customers through the door.
"Because we do full carcasses of animals, we have some very big fridges to keep them in and it's actually the fridges that are on 24-hours a day. They consume a lot of energy. Also, the fridges in the shop are open-fronted and I know we could put doors on them and that'll save a fair few thousand pounds.
"We're a very small shop so it's quite hard when on a Saturday, you have lots of people getting in and out, doors get in the way. We haven't done that yet but we have looked at maybe putting solar panels on to mitigate a little bit, so we're looking into different things."