Olympus Global

The Challenge

Olympus Global supplies engineering fasteners, precision-turned and machined components, castings, aluminium extrusions and forgings to industrial and automotive customers across the UK and Europe. Its head office and distribution centre are in Tipton, in the West Midlands, and the £38m turnover business is growing, with a new distribution facility under construction in Newton Aycliffe.

Distribution doesn’t carry the energy reputation of heavy manufacturing, but a busy warehouse still builds a steady daytime load from lighting, materials handling, IT and offices across the working week. At Tipton, all of that electricity was bought from the grid while two warehouse roofs sat overhead generating nothing.

The Solution

Eden Sustainable designed and delivered 179 kWp of rooftop solar PV across the pitched trapezoidal metal roofs of two buildings at the Tipton site: 108 kWp (235 panels) on Unit 1 and 71 kWp on Unit 2. Olympus Global funded the project itself as a capital investment and owns both arrays.

The roof skylights were covered before panel work began. The programme ran for about seven weeks, from scaffold going up in late February 2023 to client handover that April. Disruption to the distribution operation was confined to one pre-planned shutdown window in late March, when the system was connected into the main switchboard. Eden managed the grid connection application with National Grid Electricity Distribution and all compliance.

The Outcome

Olympus Global now saves £22,000 a year on electricity and avoids 33 tonnes of CO₂ every year at its Tipton headquarters. Those savings belong entirely to the business, with no funder’s share and no unit rate to renegotiate.

As Olympus adds a fifth site, the headquarters that coordinates the whole operation already runs partly on electricity generated on its own roofs. That matters at a time when automotive and industrial buyers are looking harder at emissions across their supply chains.