Clarke Energy were delighted to receive the Excellence & Innovation in International Trade award at Insider Media’s North West International Trade Awards 2018. The ceremony, held in association with the Department for International Trade North West, took place on 6th December at The Lowry Hotel, Manchester.
The Excellence & Innovation in International Trade award celebrates companies for which international trade is in their DNA and who have achieved international success by innovating and finding new opportunities in mature or emerging markets.
Clarke Energy were shortlisted for the award alongside:
– Rayburn Trading
– The TALL Group
– Hockley International
– Reach and Rescue
The judges were impressed by the many cutting-edge renewable and high efficiency gas generation projects across the world Clarke Energy have installed. Two recent projects demonstrating innovation in our sector include:
Clarke Energy’s first biogas upgrading plant – Perpignan, France
With one of Clarke Energy’s core market segments – biogas – there is a move away from using the gas in an engine to directly produce renewable energy, towards the cleaning of the gas for injection into the gas grid or alternatively as a vehicle fuel. In response to this Clarke Energy has supplied and installed the first such system at a biogas plant in Perpignan, France. The waste water treatment plant is the first in Occitania and the Mediterranean Arc to produce renewable gas and inject it into the network.
Clarke Energy’s first hybrid power plant – Lagos, Nigeria
With the reduction in price of electricity storage technology and intermittent renewable power sources such as wind and solar energy, there is a move towards combining technologies for optimised power solutions for our customers.
Our first such project has been delivered at OK Plast bottling factory in Nigeria, which operates on a power island and uses gas engines previously supplied by Clarke Energy. In 2018 we commissioned a new addition to the facility which deploys ultracapacitor storage units in order to smooth stresses on the local power station caused by high block loads from the plastics extrusion machinery.This project is what we believe will be the first of many, with applications in other countries and is our first microgrid based power plant.
Many congratulations to all the other winners and shortlisted companies on the night and best wishes for another successful year in international trade in 2019.