A START-UP firm in Holcombe Brook has launched an innovative way for big businesses to meet their energy requirements while helping support charities and disadvantaged communities.

Community Energy Trading Limited (CETL) has seized the opportunity presented by the de-regulation of the energy market to provide electricity supplies to UK companies looking to enhance their corporate social responsibility programmes.

Unlike traditional suppliers, CETL ensures that half of the profits made from their supply contracts are used to fund support groups involved in helping their community overcome social and economic deprivation by creating new jobs by way of grants and soft loans.

Launched in June, Beauly Close-based CETL is already in talks with more than 80 blue chip companies, including some of the UK's most well known retailers and manufacturers, and about 30 charitable organisations.

The concept has proved so popular that CETL's initial annual turnover target of £3.8 million underestimated the demand for the service and the business is now on track to turn over £9 million in its first 12 months of trading.

CETL is the brainchild of renewable energy expert Dr Alan Green and his colleague Vince Hulley, who together have more than 40 years of experience in energy supply and trading.

The two men, along with other shareholders, invested their savings to start the venture. They have secured equity funding from the North West Business Investment Scheme which has provided 25 per cent of the necessary initial working capital requirement, essential to the business start-up.

The Investment Scheme, which is backed by the North West Development Agency, was set up to provide risk capital for start-up companies, like CETL, based in areas classed as Transitional or Objective 2.

Dr Alan Green, a director of CETL, said: "We developed the idea more than two years ago in response to increasing numbers of businesses becoming more involved in their communities. The level of interest we have seen shows how high a priority corporate social responsibility is.

"We're now expecting interest from the public sector as well as commercial and charitable organisations".

He added: "Although the lowest-price energy suppliers can offer businesses bigger cash savings, we provide the added value of supporting worthy causes".

CETL now hopes to diversify its offering and begin to supply gas as well as electricity to their customers in the coming months.

Gordon Harter, investment manager at Manchester-based Yorkshire Fund Managers, who are managing the NWBIS, said: "Working closely with Community Energy Trading Limited, we have found a management team whose knowledge and passion is more than matched by a genuine ethos and a well researched business plan."