Merger will realise full potential of Power Efficiency

The £18 million deal in which Balfour Beatty has acquired Power Efficiency (PE) is good news for customer choice says PE boss Bobby Collinson. Speaking to ELN he said the […]

The £18 million deal in which Balfour Beatty has acquired Power Efficiency (PE) is good news for customer choice says PE boss Bobby Collinson. Speaking to ELN he said the merger will not quell PE’s entrepreneurial spirit and will mean the ability to provide all round energy solutions.

“This deal is great for our customers. It’s business as usual, we’re still going to get you the best deal but now we have the back up of a global company like Balfour Beatty which means we can provide an end to end service. We can now implement projects and finance them. For example if we do a survey and realise you can save money by replacing all your air conditioning units we can now do that for you too.

“We’ve done this deal for one reason, to increase capability on both sides and provide our customers and the market a wider service.”

The deal which took less than three months to complete will mean a merger of the companies boards with Collinson staying at the helm but now able to call upon BB’s resources and service sector to offer finance and day to day building management. The Power Efficiency brand would continue as is for now.

“The brand of Power Efficiency stays as it is this moment in time, we’ll simply be a Balfour Beatty company. There are no redundancies.

This deal is about growth and fulfilling our vision to become Europe’s leading energy consultancy providing procurement, compliance and now implementation and building management in one place.”

The merger comes less than a fortnight after a similar deal between Summit Energy and Schneider Electric and less than a year since Encore International was bought by M&C. So with more and more conglomeration in the market what will be different about this deal and isn’t it all really bad for customer choice?

Collinson disagreed: “Bad for choice? That depends on your view. Is it better to have 200 to 300 brokers all offering much the same but don’t have the clout to influence things and deal with rising energy prices of at least 15-20%? Or is it better to have ten or so larger organisations that can really offer help to cut bills? This is not about putting up fees its about saving more energy for our clients.

“As for what makes this deal different? Well our competitors will have to watch out as we now have an entrepreneurial spirit within Balfour Beatty. We’ll grow the Power Efficiency vision and give a much wider service. For example if you ask a builder to design an extension most of us would ask the same builder to make it, that’s what we can now do deliver in one hit. We’ll still be friendly and personable and we have good intentions. We’ve got a great vision and I’m here to realise that.”

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