Cyrenians, a leading homeless charity, recently opened a new food distribution warehouse and depot on the outskirts of Edinburgh. As a former industrial site, the charity needed support and guidance on how to reduce the fixed capacity charges at the new depot that were set at too high a level for their future planned operations and, from there, to help with utility procurement to minimise future spend.
Cyrenians reached out to Inspiring Scotland, seeking help to resolve these issues, and as Boxfish had supported a range of other charities and third sector organisations with expert utility related advice in the past, we were introduced and asked if we could help.
We started by providing initial guidance on how Cyrenians could reduce their fixed costs by optimising the capacity charge for the site, while still maintaining sufficient flexibility to enable growth in the future. Once, the capacity was adjusted to a more realistic level, we then provided utility procurement support via a full market tender for the half-hourly electricity supply contract.
Recognising that the charity had no historic consumption data to provide to the utility suppliers, we also helped build a consumption profile estimate for the future consumption based on analysing installed plant and equipment, the anticipated run times and future operating patterns. From there we tendered the supply contract, managing the various suppliers and identified the best value option to lock in.
Like all charities, controlling our expenditure is an essential aspect of everything we do and the utility procurement support from Boxfish to help reduce our ongoing utility supply contract costs really made a difference. With partners like Boxfish, we know we can put our full focus on our mission to tackle the causes and consequences of homelessness, safe in the knowledge they are taking case of our utility needs.