The firm primarily works with wind turbines on farming and agricultural land, with a focus on Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and the surrounding areas.
The business was established in January 2016 after a gap quickly emerged in the market after a previous company went into administration. TGL Managing Director, Nick, was at that time employed by this company and found that there were suppliers and customers left in limbo, all of whom were looking for support.
After fielding calls all through Christmas 2015, Nick and wife Suzanne decided to step up and establish a new business in order to fill the gap and support the customers that were left behind. They brought with them a collective background in engineering and agriculture, as well as management and working in a busy environment. Since then, TGL has grown considerably and is now a market leader in the green economy.
Despite inheriting a huge amount of history from their predecessor, TGL is very much a new business and run in a very different way since it was established in January 2016.
TGL operates in an industry that is not without its challenges. The onshore wind industry is a small community that are often in contact to share knowledge where possible, but several firms have gone into administration in recent years.
TGL provides service and maintenance formany different makes and model of wind turbines. They work with turbines that are found on small holdings for a small number of people without high energy needs and generate around 5 kilowatts, right up to those wind turbines that generate up to 500 kilowatts. This means that TGL’s team are all qualified to work at height and on a variety of different size projects.
Many other firms focus on one or two models of wind turbine, whereas TGL have a much wider scope but tend to work very locally, cultivating a strong relationship with their client base. Working locally means it is more viable for TGL to do repairs in their workshop when the weather prevents them from working outdoors and at height, which is another bonus for their customers.
In the coming years, TGL are considering whether their current team might need to grow, although a new team is a large investment in an industry that requires extensive health and safety qualifications, insurance and other financial obligations.
Like many other firms, the pandemic caused significant disruption to the operation of the business. A slimmed down team continued working early on in the pandemic, and some engineers were furloughed for a short period of time while TGL worked with the FSB legal advice team to understand how COVID regulations would require them to work. After undertaking a risk assessment, providing PPE and installing handwashing facilities in their vans, staff came back from furlough and TGL hit the ground running once again.
In the future, TGL hope to expand and continue to grow, although much of their ability to do this is controlled by the wider industry. TGL are hopeful that the production of electricity from onshore wind will see the support that it had in the past and the installation of new and replacement turbines will be cost affective for customers once again.
Having recently won Micro Business of the Year at the FSB Wales Celebrating Small Business Awards earlier this year, the business is continuing to build on its strong reputation. At the same time, Suzanne and Nick’s dedicated, innovative team will no doubt continue to ensure that TGL is one of the leaders of the green revolution in Wales.