Gary Burgess
Gary Burgess holds a BSc(Hon) engineering degree awarded by Loughborough University of Technology (LUT) having read Electronic, Computer & Systems Engineering, together with a Diploma in Industrial Studies (DIS) for development work in production automation cells. Early career appointments included Hawker Siddley, Racal, Plessey and Philips. Whilst at Plessey he headed production test of optoelectronics for aircraft head-up displays and also the development of high speed LED printer technology.
Gary became Product Manager for Philips, working from the European Headquarters based in Eindhoven. In this role, he managed production development and marketing strategy specifically for digital storage instrumentation, moving production and sales from 300 to over 7,500 units per year, successfully introducing products into the US market in alliance with Fluke, Seattle.
On return to the UK joined Oce, a major office products company, in a commercial function, and led significant profitability improvement programs for their photocopier offering. Moving to spearhead digital printing within the company he achieved the highest European sales performance accolade for the business. Later pioneering the development of Facilities Management services for Oce customers he moved turnover for this department to £12M within 3-years together with forward contracts worth more than £40M.
The next step was with Hays Commercial Services, Gary joined the Business Process Outsourcing team to develop productised service offering, building solutions around call centres, data printing, records & document management, and payment processing. Gary successfully reduced customer costs for support by effective transition to Asia and Eastern Europe, contract values from £50M being achieved.
Gary took his initial step into the renewable energy sector by taking an equity position in BioenerG Ltd and made a successful bid to supply bio-fuels to a major water utility, securing the contract to develop an 8MW CHP green energy solution with a revenue value up to £35M. Delivering 15M litres per year as part of the solution he developed a bio-diesel transesterification plant together with the logistics operation to supply and meet regulatory compliance.
Staying with the renewable sector Gary partnered with Environmental Energies Ltd to lead the development of applications in large scale Solar PV. Gary holds the required qualifications for the design, installation and service of Solar PV systems certified by the NICEIC accreditation body and has MCS approvals for MIS3001 & MIS3002.
Drawing on his engineering background Gary then supported the burgeoning Anaerobic Digestion (AD) activities for the business, particularly for containerised AD plants, successfully introducing the technology into small scale use for the hotel sector and also man-camps used by exploration and disaster recovery organisations. Building on his AD technical knowledge Gary teamed with a major renewables consultancy, to provide technical input and design for a number of AD projects. This lead on to his successful sole design project with Bio Dynamic (UK) Ltd; including input for the planning and permitting approval, civils construction, and operation of a 5MW CHP biogas AD plant using collected packaged food waste as the feedstock. By waste license approval, handling upto 150,000 tonnes/year, this plant is among the largest to be built and commissioned in the UK.
The development has also won a number of environmental accolades.
Gary aged 57, has been married for 32 years, is a qualified yachtsman and likes to unwind completing crosswords and Sudoku puzzles.