Inverness Caledonian Thistle chief executive Scot Gardiner discusses the impact of getting planning permission for the club's proposed battery storage facility in the Highland capital.
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00:00 What was your reaction when the vote came through and you found it had been approved?
00:03 A bit of shock and a bit of relief. Well, a lot of shock because the way the hearing had gone
00:10 did not seem to be going in our direction and we probably had a mixture of anger and
00:20 disappointment as it was going on because of what was being said. However, I was sat next
00:28 to the chairman in the chamber and Nicola Drummond, our consultant to my right,
00:35 and when the vote was taken and it was 3-2 in our favour,
00:41 I can't remember a feeling like that for a long, long, long time. We knew how
00:49 very serious it was, how very important it was to us. Almost three years of work,
00:56 so something culminates. It's very rare three years culminates into two minutes of a vote,
01:03 or even less perhaps. So it was an amazing feeling. We didn't do anything,
01:11 we didn't shout out or anything. We left the chamber and there was,
01:15 I'm not ashamed to say, there was hugs and tears outside because we can now secure
01:24 this brilliant football club, this brilliant exemplar in the community for
01:31 years and years and years to come. That's what was in the balance. It wasn't just putting the
01:38 team on the pitch, it was serving breakfast to kids who don't get breakfast and Christmas meals
01:44 to people who are on their own. All of these things were all on the line, so it wasn't just
01:49 can we sign another centre forward or something. So it was an enormously happy moment, but we were
01:56 probably in a bit of a shock because it seemed everything was going against us during the debate.
02:01 You said there's been three years you've been working on this, trying to pull all this together.
02:06 How quickly do you anticipate seeing the benefits of this being passed now?
02:09 Within weeks. We knew that as well. We knew that within weeks because we knew what all the
02:15 contracts stated, because all the contracts were signed, everything was done, but they couldn't
02:20 be purified until or unless planning was granted. So weeks and not months.
02:31 And you mentioned it's not just about getting a new centre forward and obviously, I think
02:37 naturally when fans hear there's going to be investment for the club, that is their first
02:41 port of call. Is the team on the pitch going to be strengthened? Do you anticipate that as well
02:47 as these other behind the scenes projects or is it more?
02:49 No, that's what we intend, but we've got to make sure. This happens to football clubs
02:58 when they sell a player for a lot of money or a new owner comes in and they can drop a lot of
03:05 money into a project and there's no forward planning. So we got the point of this was to
03:10 secure the club. So us securing our land back again has been a vital thing for the last
03:18 almost five years that I've been here was get the land back, get the land back. We got the stadium
03:23 back just as I was joining and get the land back. And then once we had the land back, we then did
03:28 the ability to develop the land for the benefit of the football club. So there's a six figure
03:36 sum every year coming into the football club. So it didn't matter if we had a bad run of injuries
03:42 and that dropped us down the table as it happened because the club would be secure.
03:47 And because we don't have an owner, a wealthy owner as such, we have people who are wealthy
03:53 and they love the club and they have stood up for the club financially while we were
04:00 getting this project to where we got to yesterday. We don't have that
04:03 sugar daddy or sugar mama that can just drop money in as and when you need it. We have to
04:16 garner all of our finances and make sure. But we brought in Duncan Ferguson with a view to
04:26 we were going to furnish Duncan with the players that would allow him to have a go at it.
04:32 And this season will be the season that will play out because he joined after the window shut.
04:38 The summer window, the winter window is notoriously difficult. So the season will play out.
04:44 He'll give it his best shot. We'll see. You never know what happens this season. And then next
04:48 season we'll be in a better place. But no, it's not all about that because it's about securing
04:52 the future of the football club so that there is a football club to have a run at the league
04:56 or whatever, a run at the cup again. And that's the most important thing. But also for what we
05:05 can do, as I say, because I think we are a pillar of the community and now we can be even more of a
05:11 pillar of the community because if you're skint, you can't do any good for anyone. You can't do
05:16 any good for anyone. So most most reasonable funds recognise that the chairman, Ross,
05:24 went to the supporters trust meeting on Saturday and explained a lot of that. I've explained a lot
05:31 of that in the past on podcasts and in meetings. Most people understand. But football being
05:38 football, some people go, never mind that. What about that? And that's fine. We understand that
05:44 as well. Some people's minds work in a different way, but it was critical. It was an absolute
05:51 sliding doors moment for this football club. It was a sliding doors moment and make no mistake
05:57 about it. And I spoke to the chairman this morning and he said, you know, you know what happened last
06:05 night? I said, no, he said nothing. I didn't wake up at three worrying. I didn't wake up at four
06:11 worrying. I didn't wake up at five worrying. And I was being the same as well. And himself and
06:19 some of the directors just deserve all the credit in the world for everything to get us to here and
06:27 we all work as a team. But everyone deserves. That won't come, but that will come in history
06:34 when they write the story again in another 30 years. This will be seen to be one of the most
06:42 pivotal moments in the club's history for sure. But only if we manage it properly.
06:47 Of course, I appreciate you might not want or you might not be able to go into specifics when it
06:52 comes to like numbers and figures and stuff like that. You said before it was a six figure income.
06:58 This is going to add every year and the financial losses that the club have had, especially over
07:03 the last few years, have been pretty well documented at this point. How much does this
07:07 new investment, how far does this new investment go to cancelling some of those losses out? Is it,
07:14 you're going to be profitable from here on out? No, I think in the championship,
07:18 if we're in the championship, it's very difficult to be profitable. So our plan is to have, if we do
07:25 have any, you know, we want to not lose any money. But if this is garnered correctly and managed
07:33 properly, then it will allow us to make sure that that's our situation, that we can give a manager
07:47 more to have a better chance of getting promoted. Or if and when we get promoted,
07:55 it would give us a better chance of staying there. So, but only if we garner it properly. So,
08:01 you know, this is worth seven figures to the club and it's what we do then with those seven figures.
08:08 But as I say, that allows us with our land, which we now have back, to develop and to generate an
08:17 income. And that will then, you know, but you can't do that without that capital. So to have
08:25 the seed capital, which allows us to do things to the stadium, which really badly need done,
08:30 leaking roofs and all the things and facilities that we want to do better.
08:36 But you can't do that if you're losing seven, eight hundred thousand a year and you don't have
08:41 someone wealthy. So we've got to make sure that we manage this properly and husband the money
08:46 correctly so that we can move forward. And that's, you know, joking aside from speaking to the
08:54 chairman this morning, I'm saying, you know, we slept, we both slept last night. And some of the
09:00 other directors, as sure would be the same, it's kind of serious stuff and we need to get into it.
09:06 A lot of local businesses have supported us for a long time. We need to
09:12 take care of some of these things and make sure they're, you know,
09:15 looked after for that. So lots of different things. But it was,
09:21 you know, it was a serious moment in the club's history.
09:24 For sure. The last one on the battery part, and this might be a little bit of my own ignorance
09:30 going into this. Obviously, we've talked about the impact it can have and how it's going to
09:33 safeguard the club's future. How is it you actually generate the income from this? Is it
09:40 owning the land and then sort of renting that out? You know, how does that process work?
09:44 So we put together an intelligent land investment, our ILI group. They're our main partner
09:55 and the sponsors are the C's on the Jersey ILI. And what they do is
10:05 renewable energy projects. Normally they package them up. So they go and find land,
10:10 they go in and that might be for a hydro pump storage like Red John, which we haven't even,
10:15 you know, started yet, but that's all come to fruition as well. So they go package up the
10:22 land, they get all the correct permissions, planning applications, everything. And
10:27 then they sell that. So they tie it up in a big green bow for renewable energy and they
10:35 sell it, whether that's wind farms, hydro pump storage, plants, battery farms. And they came
10:45 obviously on board in relation to the Red John project, which is down at north of Foyers,
10:52 above Foyers. And the plan was that we were obviously going to have a parking right here
11:00 and that was going to reduce the traffic by 95% for Red John. So that became the main planning
11:07 condition once they got their planning application approved. The main planning condition was that
11:12 they had to be a parking right for 350 cars at the Caledonian Stadium. And that would remove 95%
11:18 of the cars that would go through doors or else. So that's fantastic. That was very green for us.
11:25 It's our contribution. And we signed a contract worth seven figures to us with them.
11:29 But that contract couldn't be purified until someone bought the project from there.
11:37 So that's now been bought and Stackraft are the partners who will be operating that. So that's
11:43 worth seven figures to Calais Thistle. Is that a different seven figures? Totally separate.
11:52 And then we have a situation with
11:54 ILI where the chairman Ross helped out ILI on a particular project.
12:06 And the managing director Mark Wilson said a little while later, "Thanks, appreciate that help.
12:16 We've got an idea. Here's what we can do to help you." And the Battery Farm idea came to fruition.
12:22 We then, obviously one of our directors David Cameron has owned Fairways and ILI said we've got
12:33 the link to the national grid. So we've got the connection, which is the hardest thing to get.
12:41 It's expensive. We've got that view of the land. We can do this. So we set up ICT Battery Farm
12:51 as a project. And what will happen is that that will be that project that has now been tied up
13:06 in a bow and is sold to, because we don't do battery farms, you know, so we're good, but we're
13:15 not that good. So we will, that will ultimately be run, built, operated by someone else. But with all
13:23 the sale of that going to the Football Club, and that was all done in advance of that.
13:32 So we're the beneficial owner of this project, which now has planning. Therefore, everything,
13:39 all the dominoes now will take over because we were the 100% beneficial owner. Callie Thistle
13:45 was 100% beneficial owner. And that, as I say, those funds allow us, the funds from Red John
13:53 allow us to develop the stadium site with our stadium plumb in the middle of that, and north
14:03 and south pointing in the way. So effectively, we have a chairman, a couple of directors,
14:09 but particularly the chairman who is Ross, is an excellent property developer. So he knows what we
14:18 can do in relation to this site. But with the stadium, everything's pointing in the stadium.
14:24 So anything we do, whether it's parking rights or whatever, points in the way. And there's a number
14:30 of projects we're speaking to. In the middle of all of that, what then happened, which was
14:34 extremely helpful was freeport status. Because freeport status made the land more, apart from
14:42 being more valuable, it's brought in the opportunity for some other things to be the case.
14:47 What they are, we don't know at the moment, because we've been speaking to various different
14:51 people, whether it's life sciences or related to renewable energy. We don't know how that will pan
14:59 out. But it's not a bad thing. Having it, it might be that the projects that are developed here
15:05 are related to freeport, and it might be that they're not. Whatever's the best for the club is
15:11 what we'll do. So that's, but at the moment, it's attracting companies because of the freeport
15:21 status. So we're in discussions with multiple companies. But again, in business, there's many
15:29 companies go out of business when they have a full order book. We had a full order book,
15:33 good but no cash flow. We had a full order book. But our cash flow was desperate in the championship,
15:39 there's no way for them to come. And we're trying to run a full time football club and a full time
15:45 academy and full time everything else. So you require funding. And that's what this does. This
15:53 funds the football club to do the things that will make us healthy going forward.
16:06 But everything's plugged into the club. Everything's for the benefit of the club.
16:09 Nothing goes out any else elsewhere.