Certa managing director Orla Stevens gave up on her dream of being a famous radio broadcaster, but now leads major fuel supplier
Certa managing director Orla Stevens gave up on her dream of being a famous radio broadcaster but now leads major fuel supplier
“I don’t think the world of broadcasting is any poorer for my absence,” she laughs. Despite the bump in the road, her time in radio involved some work in sales which was to set the wheels of the rest of her career in motion. After that, she worked for Esat Digifone, which was a start-up at the time, and which went on to become O2 and is now Three.
Following further stints with Vodafone and SSE Airtricity, she has now been with Certa for the past three years. Having previously been the group’s commercial director, she has been in the managing director’s chair for about six months – her first foray in a top job. Certa, which is part of the DCC services group, is one of the biggest home heating fuels businesses in the State, with a national network of 23 depots and 100 trucks. It also operates a network of 49 unmanned “pay at the pump” forecourts and is in the solar energy space too.
“We also at times buy other smaller distributors and businesses with maybe five or six trucks. DCC is an acquisitive business, so we will continue to do that.” Certa has big climate ambitions and believes its roll-out of hydrotreated vegetable oil can be a major player in helping the State meet its carbon emissions targets.
The group also has agreements in place with a number of operators of data centres to power their facilities with HVO while they wait between two and five years to get a connection to the grid. “At the moment we are just in Liffey Valley with EV charging,” she says. “I would like to see more EV charging at our sites and we have plans to do that. It’s a large capital expense but it’s the way to go.
“We’re not a retailer like some of our competition but we are moving into non-fuel income streams. Where we can, we sell anything that is related to cars. We also have our own coffee which we designed ourselves. That kind of light retail is something we are watching and trying to see if there is more of an opportunity.”
“I know the government is very pro-retrofitting and insulation and solar which we absolutely buy in to, but for some customers that is out of reach at the moment. Changing the home heating oil is not out of reach. They don’t need to spend any money.”
Dcc Energy-Crisis Climate-Change
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