Setting A New Standard: Solarport Achieves B Corp™ Certification!
Setting A New Standard: Solarport Achieves B Corp™ Certification!
At Solarport, our mission is simple: to deliver the critical solar infrastructure that accelerates the global transition to clean energy. We innovate, design, engineer and manufacture the mounting structures and carports that remain for decades, the foundation everything else is built on. And now, after a rigorous assessment, we are delighted to announce that we are officially a certified B Corporation™.
It’s a hugely important milestone in our journey to be recognised as a business that creates positive impact for people and the planet. B Corp™ status also matters to us because certification remains almost unheard of in the industry, and we want to raise the bar for what our industry expects of itself. We’re proud to join a global community of businesses working toward a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable economy.
Achieving this certification is proof that the same standards we hold ourselves to on-site and in the ground now apply to how we run the business behind it: how we treat our people, our communities, our environment, and everyone we work with.
For our clients, that means something absolute: when you build with Solarport, you’re building with a company that’s been independently verified, not just on what we deliver but on how we deliver it, and what we’re willing to be held accountable for along the way.
Our Journey to Becoming B Corp™ Certified
Certified B Corporations™, or B Corps™, are businesses independently verified as meeting rigorous standards for social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. They are assessed on the products or services they provide and how the whole business operates.
This reflected one of our core values: We Care Deeply – care for our people, our communities, our environment and everyone we work with. Much of what B Corp asks of a business was already embedded in how we operate and the principles we believe in. Achieving B Corp™ certification meant putting those commitments under the microscope: formally proving them, documenting them properly, and holding ourselves accountable to them in writing and law, not just in spirit.
The assessment looks at every part of a business, from governance, workers and community to the environment and customers. For us, that meant taking a close look at how we’re governed at board level, how we support our people, how we engage with the communities around our sites, and the environmental impact of our operations, from the raw materials we use through to end-of-life decommissioning.
We didn’t just meet the bar; we exceeded it! But for us, becoming a B Corp™ is more than meeting a standard. To make sure this isn’t just words, we’ve updated our Articles of Association, a formal, legal requirement from B Corp™, that makes us further consider the interests of our people, our customers, our communities, and the environment alongside those of our shareholders when making business decisions.
ESG Manager Gemma Holmes says֭ “Earning B Corp™ certification is something I’m hugely proud of. What excites me the most is what it commits us to and what it sets out for us to work on going forward. It also means we’re now part of a community of 3,000+ businesses in the UK and a global community of over 10,000+ across more than 100 countries, all held to one simple idea: that how you do business matters as much as what you build. Maintaining that is where the real work begins, and I’m so excited to get started.”
Setting a New Benchmark
Our goal has always been to set the standards in the industry. Achieving B Corp™ certification recognises our pioneering approach; no other solar ground-mount or carport company has reached this milestone before us. It reflects a commitment that runs through every fibre of Solarport and recognises that this is what it means to make sustainability a core part of how we do business, not just what we say.
For a business operating in heavy manufacturing and construction, achieving B Corp™ certification comes with a particular set of challenges, which makes the recognition even more significant. Supply chains are complex, processes can be emissions-intensive, and the infrastructure we deliver is designed to perform for decades. That makes taking responsibility for our impact across the entire business even more important.
The wider industry has spent the last several years scaling fast to meet demand for renewable energy, and in some cases, accountability infrastructure hasn’t kept pace, which is why this matters so much to us. We didn’t wait for the industry to catch up with its own growth; we’re setting the standard ourselves.
It also means something for the people we build for, our trusted customers. Choosing to work with Solarport means choosing a partner that holds itself to this standard by choice, not because it’s required to.
More Than a Certification
Our assessment showed real strength in how we’re governed, how we treat our people, and how we work with our customers, reflecting the structures, policies and financial controls we have in place, as well as the parts built on relationships and trust. This is only the start of our B Corp™ journey. There’s still more work we want to do, from reducing our environmental impact to strengthening our role in the communities around us. B Corp™ matters to us because it gives us a framework to recognise where we can do better, measure our progress and hold ourselves accountable to the commitments we’ve made.
Earlier this year, we made that accountability a company-wide priority, not just an ESG one. We adopted Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) across the business, with “setting standards for responsible delivery” as a leading company objective, so now every team is measured against it.
We’re calculating the second iteration of our corporate carbon footprint across all three scopes, giving us the data we need to set real reduction targets and a credible pathway to achieve them. Next year, we’ll go one step further and begin to produce Environmental Product Declarations for our products, deepening our supply chain engagement, and working toward verification under the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). This isn’t just good for the planet, it gives our customers clearer, verified data on the footprint of what we build together.
Alongside this, we’ll continue to build on our social impact commitments, from supporting our charitable partners to providing Volunteer Time Off for our people. We’ll also keep strengthening governance across the business, with our ESG and Charity Committees helping to embed this work into how we operate.
B Corp™ gives us a framework to measure ourselves against as we grow, and, importantly, to keep improving. We look forward to sharing that progress along the way, and we want our customers, partners and people to hold us accountable to the commitments we’ve made.
General Counsel & CCO at Solarport, Gemma Buckley, says, “To say I am proud of Solarport and everyone who works here on this recognition is an understatement. B Corp certification is not a badge you are handed, we have earned it, through the day-to-day decisions of our people who care deeply about doing the right thing. Leading our Legal, People and ESG teams, I get to see that care up close, in how we treat each other, how we look after our community and how seriously we take our impact on the planet. This is a standard I want us to keep raising, not a box we have ticked and forget. I could not be prouder of what we have built together, and I am even more excited about where we take it next”.
As we reflect on this achievement, it’s fair to say a huge amount of work has gone into reaching this point, and we’re very proud of every single person across Solarport who helped get us here.
We’ll keep doing what we do best: innovating, designing, engineering, manufacturing and constructing the infrastructure that’s accelerating the shift to clean energy across the UK and Europe, but now as a certified B Corporation™.
This is a first for Solarport and a company like ours, and we hope it’s a step forward for our whole industry. We’re proud to be part of a growing community of businesses that measure success by more than profit alone, and we’re just getting started!