Podcast 357: How a redundancy, an apprenticeship and a bet on solar sparked Ciaran Marron’s journey to build a scaling Monaghan-headquartered business that now has its sights on global expansion.
A few years back I spoke with a then EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist called Ciaran Marron about the early days of his business Activ8 Solar Energies when he and his colleagues went from door to door in Meath and his native Monaghan posting flyers informing home owners about this new technology called solar.
From such humble origins, and many a twist and turn along the way, Marron has built a business that now employs more than 300 people and recently reached the milestone of installing more than 250,000 solar panels across Ireland as it evolved from residential to industrial installations.
“We were constantly evolving, innovation is in our DNA from day one, we always wanted to be ahead of the curve, and a lot of those people are still with us in the business 20 years later”
Not only that but we recently reported how the business has begun work on the largest rooftop solar installation in Ireland at Co Cavan manufacturer Mannok. It is just a taste of the future of what’s in store for the Monaghan business as it already has boots on the ground in mainland Europe and the United States to apply its expertise to next generation data centre projects.
The business recently established a €200 million fund to offer Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) allowing clients to install systems with zero upfront costs.
A switched-on mindset
Marron traces the origins of Activ8 to a redundancy notice. After college he trained as an electronic engineer sponsored by Intel before being told upon graduation that the promised job was gone. “It took a bit of a backward step, or so I felt at the time,” he recalls.
His response was not typical for a graduate. He decided to do an apprenticeship as an electrician, which he calls “the best thing I ever did.”
Having spotted opportunities for a then nascent technology called solar, Marron went into business in 2005 at a time when the Celtic Tiger hubris was in full swing and “everything was possible.”
However, when the recession hit in 2008 he got his first taste of business turbulence. “All of a sudden no new houses were being built. Builders couldn’t afford to finish their developments, couldn’t afford to pay you.”
Not one to allow setbacks to slow him down, Marron pursued the retrofit market, targeting existing homes with grant-supported solar and heating upgrades. A direct mail campaign in Meath drove an “overwhelming response” and once Activ8 secured a supply chain direct from an Austrian manufacturer, things began to accelerate.
“Within 18 months were the largest solar PV and solar thermal installer in the country.
“I suppose if the recession never happened, who knows where we’d be today. But it let us really knuckle down and figure out what we were going to do. It changed our whole business model from new build to the retrofit market, and it taught us a lot of lessons about lifting deposits, about how important cash flow was. When we went to Europe to buy product we were getting zero credit, so we had to work out how we were going to fund that. A lot of lessons. We celebrated our 20th anniversary a couple of weeks ago in a local hotel here, and it’s hard to believe the changes we’ve seen.”
From keeping the wolf from the door to implementing the largest rooftop solar installation in Ireland and winning business in the UK such as John Lennon Airport, the journey has been turbulent. “We now have crews across Europe, largely working on data centre installations. So from a punt to a very large business, it feels like overnight, but it was far from an overnight success.”
The power of apprenticeships
Right now in the UK, the Prime Minister Andy Burnham is urging young people to take on apprenticeships and as far as Marron is concerned he’s not wrong. On his own path into the electrician trade and Ireland’s ongoing conversation about apprenticeships and university, he is direct: “Trades are AI bulletproof.
Putting such words into action, Activ8 has built a training academy inside its own warehouse in partnership with Cavan-Monaghan Enterprise Training Board (CMETB), complete with a house rigged with solar thermal, solar PV and heat pump systems for trainees to learn on.
“I went to college and enjoyed that, and learned plenty, but I’d definitely say what I’ve learned through my apprenticeship is really what’s made us become the business we’ve become. For many years, and I speak about this regularly, there’s a stigma associated with an apprenticeship. I’d highly disagree with that. I think there’s no better way, and I’ve seen this through our business, we’ve over 300 staff working for us, there’s no better way to get hands on experience than an apprenticeship, earning as you get educated, getting the real experience.”
I asked Marron about how he evolved from electrician to CEO and the myriad problems that come with securing business, staying technologically relevant and employing hundreds of people.
“It’s something I’ve said many times, I’m a CEO by default. I’m an electrician, that’s how I recognise myself in the mirror in the morning. Nothing trains you for this, a bit like the apprenticeship, it’s the life lessons. At the very start, we were in a recession when we started scaling, and everybody was very lucky just to have a job at that time. So we were fortunate, we could get the best crop of plumbers and electricians in the country. People were grateful to have the jobs and more than willing to learn and excel, to put in the hard graft and develop the systems.
“We were constantly evolving, innovation is in our DNA from day one, we always wanted to be ahead of the curve, and a lot of those people are still with us in the business 20 years later. They bought into it because they could see the hard graft, and I was the guy putting the letters through the letterboxes, standing at the trade shows and fairs.
“I remember one customer saying to me, you put the letter through my letterbox, then you came in and sold it to me, and then you came three weeks later to do a full technical survey with a guy you were training. I’d been through the business from the very initial phases right through, and I think that’s what’s important, that’s what gets buy-in from my own staff, realising that when I’m talking about an issue out on the road, I’ve actually been in that position before. I’ve been in the trenches, look, there’s days you’re still in them, but I think it’s really important to get the right people around you.”
Scaling to the world
Activ8’s recent 6MW rooftop installation with Mannok, its work on data centre and pharmaceutical plants across Europe and more recently a shift in gravity to the States for opportunities, “America wouldn’t faze us one bit,” Marron said.
“We have an R&D team, and we invest heavily in that year on year. So much so that maybe two and a half, three years ago we developed our own solar panel, to suit Irish clients on the residential side, to suit the climate we live in, the salts, the ammonia, the wind speeds.”
Marron says he is fiercely proud of the business’s Monaghan roots and its purpose-build headquarters in Carrickmacross, which he has extended three times since it opened. The business has also expanded to include operations in Ballinasloe, Naas, Cashel and Burnley in the UK.
“We’re headquartered here, the talent is here, we’ve developed the talent,” he said, pointing to a regional pattern that has also produced globally-focused businesses like Combilift and Kingspan.
He puts some of that down to a border county mentality, in some ways isolated from the bigger cities on the island like Belfast and Dublin but in others closer because it’s a half way point between the two. “You just had to get out, graft it and figure it out.”
Reflecting on 20 years in business, Marron pointed to the people who have grown with the company as his proudest achievement. “I get a real kick out of seeing someone who came in here early on, maybe on work experience, now leading teams,” he said. “It’s ever-evolving.”
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