Tony Cleary of Lanchester Group wins ESG Award

By James Bayley

Published: 19 October, 2023

Lanchester Group founder Tony Cleary has won The ESG Award as part of The LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders programme for 2023.

Supported by The Times, The LDC Top 50 champions business leaders who are committed to a more sustainable future.

The awards, presented last night (18 October) at a celebratory event at BAFTA in London, were given out after an intense judging session, during which this year’s judging panel of Carl Castledine, CEO of Away Resorts, Janette Martin, CEO of Talos360, John Garner, managing partner of LDC, and Kate Bassett and Bex Burn-Callander, editors of The LDC Top 50 2023 selected the final award winners.

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Cleary (pictured) has built Lanchester Group, which encompasses Lanchester Wines, Greencroft Bottling, The Wine Fusion, Bon Bon’s Wholesale and Spicers of Hythe, into a much-admired business with outstanding sustainability credentials.

In 2022, they became a partner of the Harpers Sustainability Charter, an initiative committed to galvanising the trade into climate action.

To date, the privately-owned family business has invested over £13m in renewable heat and energy generation across its sites and today the business is powered almost completely by renewable wind and solar energy.

Reflecting on the award Cleary said: “We’re a family business which has invested significantly in renewable heat and energy generation at our North East and Yorkshire sites – wind turbines and solar panels create our electricity and we heat warehouses with geothermal heat pumps, using water from a disused mine workings.

“We are about to finish building Greencroft Two, our new wine bottling facility and possibly the most sustainable large building worldwide. That cost £21m, £4.8m of which is sustainable practices, and will be able to bottle up to 400m litres a year – about a quarter of all the wine sold in the UK.

John Garner, managing partner at LDC, added: “Tony has achieved end-to-end sustainable operations at an industrial scale, investing significantly in his sustainable buildings and running all operations on renewable energy. He has leveraged technology to show what can be achieved and I’d like to congratulate him on everything he’s achieved at Lanchester Group.”

You can find out more information on this year’s LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders programme here.

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