In February, Woodco Renewable Energy won the Green Product Award at the 2019 Green Awards for its new Biogenic Processor. Building Ireland heard all about it from the company Marketing Manager, Jane Foley in the days after the success at the Clayton Hotel in Dublin.
Woodco Renewable Energy is a world leader in design and manufacture of a wide range of Biomass Boiler systems including domestic, commercial, condensing and Waste to Energy Biomass Boilers.
First set-up in 1972 by Gerard Crosse, the company has decades of experience and expertise which have been passed down through generations.
Ger and Declan Crosse now head up the business as Commercial Director and Technical Director respectively.
Jane Foley has been the Marketing Manager at Woodco Renewable Energy since 2017 and told Building Ireland more about the firm – from its origins to its recent award success.
“Our Irish base is in Donaskeigh, Co Tipperary and Gerard Crosse would have founded the company back in 1972 when he was manufacturing oil boilers,” Jane outlined.
“During the 2000s the company started pellet boilers. Around 2008, we started to focus primarily on pellet boilers then in 2015 we rebranded as Woodco with Ger and Declan Crosse being the two directors of the business.”
The company has a manufacturing facility in Co. Tipperary, as well as offices in Ireland and the UK, and has supplied boiler systems across Ireland, the UK, Europe, the United States and Canada.
More recent years have saw Woodco expanding its range and they now distribute larger systems of 500kW and above and have also become firmly established in the Waste to Energy sector.
Now, some 49 years after the family company produced its first boiler, Woodco Renewable Energy still aims to provide cost-effective and sustainable Biomass Energy solutions.
The Marketing Manager of the business reports that business is also booming at the minute to the point where the company is looking at increasing its staff by 25 per cent.
“It has been very busy these last few years and we’ve got a good team of engineers and have a good focus on R&D,” Jane stated.
“We have the whole package here and in the last year in particular, we’ve had a real focus on our responsibility to develop and share our expertise.”
The people behind Woodco have always been passionate about helping homes and businesses to reduce their heating bills and carbon footprint by offering efficient and cost-effective renewable energy technology.
So, whether you run a dairy farm, a hotel and leisure centre, or anything in between, they will be able to provide you with a solution to minimise heating costs, hassle-free – and for outstanding results.
As the company’s website (woodco-energy.com) states “We are the ‘Biomass Boiler’ people”.
Woodco design, manufacture and support one of the most comprehensive ranges of commercial, domestic, condensing and WID biomass heating experience and expertise.
The company has manufactured and supplied over 3,000 boilers worldwide.
At the end of March, the achievements of Woodco were recognised on a national scale when the company took home the Green Product Award at the Green Awards 2019 for the Biogenic Processor.
“They were held in the Clayton Hotel on Burlington Road in Dublin and to win it on the night means a huge amount to everyone at Woodco,” said Jane.
“It’s great for our R&D team obviously and the likes of Declan Crosse who himself put in such a huge amount of work.
“As I said, it’s a huge acknowledgement for the company.”
Illustrating the point further, the company posted the following on its website after the award success for its Biogenic Processor:
“With a global population of over 7 billion people, the world has a poop problem. It is estimated that 2.3 billion people, more than 30% of the world’s population – primarily in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean – still lack access to basic sanitation, i.e. a toilet.
“In 1999 the United Nations acknowledged that the development gap between rich and poor countries was widening – about three-fifths of the world’s population lacked access to basic sanitation and one-third did not have access to safe drinking water.
“To address this problem, in 2015, the global community adopted a Sustainable Development Goal dedicated to clean water and sanitation (SDG 6). One of the targets of this goal calls for, ‘by 2030, achieving access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and ending open defecation’.
“Woodco’s team of expert sustainability engineers, automation engineers, manufacturers and researchers decided to come up with a solution to combat this crisis, and developed a portable Biogenic Processor customised to treat human solid waste through a process called pyrolysis.
“It can be operated completely off-grid, processing sludge from communities, reducing pathogens, volume and providing odour control. In off-grid applications, the refineries would be run off on-board battery storage during start-up Woodco uses a combination of technologies that can refine these Biogenic materials and create new outputs. These outputs, such as biochar, are safe, reusable, sustainable and beneficial for human health and the environment.
“Safe sanitation must include treatment to protect the environment and global human health. Many communities are open defecation free but still lack and pathogen free option. Our solution operates in the Circular Economy where toilet resources, i.e., human waste, are processed to provide valuable outputs.
“The Biogenic Processor is due to be introduced to market later this year, but we will have several units installed in pilot sites from May 2019. This project is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”
Woodco Renewable Energy
Donaskeigh,
Tipperary,
Co Tipperary,
E34 RX89
Tel: +353 627 4007
Web: woodco-energy.com
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, June, Vol 5 No 6
