As a business with products depending on sunlight to grow, there’s something very satisfying about the way K&K Produce has incorporated solar energy into its day-to-day operations. For an energy-intensive business, the investment also offers a practical way to reduce operating costs and gain greater control over a key business expense.
The family-owned business produces and sources fresh potatoes, fruit and vegetables in north Co Dublin. It was founded in 1984 by Tommy and Deirdre Kennedy and has grown into one of Ireland’s leading suppliers. Now supported by the second generation of their family, it supplies supermarkets, independent retailers, the food service industry and export markets.
The company combines its own growing operations with a trusted network of Irish farmers and growers, helping to bring home-grown produce to consumers throughout the year.
The business also operates packing and distribution facilities and maintains a fleet of temperature-controlled vehicles, making energy a critical resource across its operations. Investing in solar is now helping this growing company reduce its exposure to energy price volatility and plan its longer-term energy costs with greater confidence.
READ MORE
The business’s success story is one of continuous innovation, says Thomas Kennedy, the company’s financial controller. He remembers how his parents started their business driving into the fruit markets of Smithfield in Dublin, buying potatoes and delivering them to stores directly, because there were no chilled distribution centres back then.
His parents first built a small warehouse beside the family home and were one of the first to offer washed potatoes, an innovation many of us still give thanks for today.
By the 1990s they had built up a customer base that included many of the country’s best-known stores, such as Spar and SuperValu, and expanded their range, buying a wider range of home-grown vegetables direct from farmers and importing fruit from overseas.
“They were very enterprising and innovative, they focused on quality and they offered a reliable service,” says Thomas. By the late 1990s, with the introduction of chilled depots in Ireland, they were able to deliver nationwide.
As the business grew, in the early 2000s his parents moved it to new premises, just up the road in The Ward. New accounts included the discounter supermarkets and the next generation of the business was confirmed when Thomas’s brother, Michael, joined at the age of 18.
A few years later Thomas, who trained as a chartered accountant, joined too, about a decade ago. “I brought some of that experience of other industries with me,” he says.
Today the business has a 30,000 sq ft facility that combines a mix of chilled and ambient produce, both with Kennedy-branded potatoes and supermarkets’ own brands. It supplies three of Ireland’s top five supermarkets, independent retailers and employs 65 people.
Constant innovation has been central to its success, from the introduction of microwaveable packaging to the sourcing of vegetables suited for air fryers, helping to save time and energy to cook.
‘It’s all about trying to look at different technologies to see how you can improve efficiency, boost quality and save on costs’
— Thomas Kennedy, financial controller at K&K Produce
“It means that for potatoes you’re looking at 10 or 12 minutes’ cooking time, versus the 35 minutes it might take to boil or steam them,” he says.
Today K&K Produce has a pipeline of new products in development focused on delivering convenience to consumers with busy lives “who still want a healthy meal”, he says.
It’s a focus on innovation and sustainability that has helped the family business ride out a variety of challenges, from recession and inflation to the rising cost of doing business.
“Managing costs is a key part of that, into which sustainability falls,” says Thomas. “For us sustainability is becoming a much bigger part of the planning side of the business, looking at things like long-term energy costs; water usage and product waste; and what we can do to innovate on that side too.”
The business has cut its water usage by 95 per cent, for example, by introducing better water recycling systems. “It’s all about trying to look at different technologies to see how you can improve efficiency, boost quality and save on costs, not just energy but insurance, labour, packaging and transport costs too,” says Thomas, adding that the company has a fleet of 14 trucks.
“We operate seven days a week here, and use a lot of energy for washing, grading and packing produce, as well as running cold storage for 12 months of the year. We’re always trying to get that balance as much as possible, reducing packaging and offering reusable crates rather than outer bags where we can, while also ensuring we reduce food waste as much as possible.”
As part of the company’s drive to introduce more sustainable practices, it began looking at installing solar panels on its premises in 2025.
“We were at a customer conference where a number of guest speakers from the food and beverage industry were highlighting the changes they were making, which included solar,” says Thomas. That prompted him to call Electric Ireland, his energy provider, to understand what a solar installation could deliver for the business.
Electric Ireland assessed K&K Produce’s energy requirements, including the number of panels needed, the expected output and the proposed cost.
He also called in two other suppliers for quotes, before opting to go with Electric Ireland, valuing the reassurance of working with an established provider for such a significant, long-term investment.
Electric Ireland guided him through the SEAI grant process, managed the application and installed his solar panels in March of this year. It was a significant, “six-figure” investment by the business, he explains, paid for via a low-cost green bank loan.
Thomas expects the investment to pay for itself within three years, after which the panels will generate annual savings. For a business with substantial year-round energy requirements, the benefits are not limited to lower costs: generating more of its own electricity also reduces exposure to future energy price volatility.
“A lot of that is to do with the cost of energy being so high, but also because the technology has improved so much. When I first looked into it six or seven years ago, the payback time was nearly six years,” he points out.
“We believe it will produce 20 per cent of our energy a year, and we’re hoping for 25 per cent. That’s for our first phase. A second phase, which we hope to install in 2028, will save us another 15 per cent off our energy costs,” he says.
Given that climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing farmers and the food production sector generally, it feels good to be doing what he can to reduce his carbon impact too, he says.
“Three years ago we had awful rain from September to December, and people couldn’t harvest crops. This summer we’ve had drought throughout Ireland and Europe.”
But Thomas also sees genuine opportunity for the industry here. “People are more focused on healthy eating than ever, and in Ireland we produce some of the best food in the world,” he says.
That sense of control is particularly important against a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty and the potential for further energy price increases. “Our solar panels will help insulate us a little bit from the unpredictability of what happens around the world, the things we can’t control,” he says.
“The way we looked at it was as a long-term investment, rather than focus on the upfront cost. But we are seeing the benefits of it already.”
For more information visit electricireland.ie/business
