In this Green Element Podcast episode, host Will Richardson interviews Richard Fuller, owner of County Battery, a family‑run UK battery manufacturer founded in 1974. Fuller explains the company’s evolution from tyre‑related batteries to a broad product range that includes automotive, motorcycle, watch, and portable power pack batteries, both primary (non‑rechargeable) and secondary (rechargeable) cells. The core of County Battery’s success is described as its staff – the “superpower” – whose collective expertise drives product quality and continuous improvement. Five years ago the firm adopted Paul Akers’ “2‑Second Lean” system, encouraging every employee to find a two‑second daily efficiency gain, and instituted a daily 30‑minute “3S” (Sort, Sweep, Standardize) routine followed by a second half‑hour meeting where the team reviews successes, mistakes, and praises. This lean culture underpins their sustainability efforts. Concerned about carbon emissions, Fuller joined the Investors in Environment program, which provided student auditors, recommendations (e.g., LED lighting, smaller fridges), and a five‑year emissions‑reduction metric series. The company follows ISO 14001 environmental management and Toyota’s quality system (aligned with ISO 9001). Fuller notes that greener practices also cut costs, improve technology, and boost morale. CSR activities include partnerships with Portland College for people with learning difficulties. A strong learning culture is fostered through a workplace library of books and audiobooks (e.g., Jim Collins’ Good to Great). Fuller advises listeners to “go against the flow” – adopt green or unconventional choices when others do not. He concludes by inviting anyone to visit County Battery’s facilities, attend the daily morning meeting, and see their lean and sustainable operations in action. The episode also contains a sponsor message for 51tocarbonzero.com and closing calls to action for the Green Element community.
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Okay.
Hi Richard, and thank you very much for joining the Green Element Podcast. So tell us a bit about your business and what's your purpose and who you work with.
Okay, thanks Will, lovely to see you this morning. Well, the company was started in 1974 by my father. He started off as a tyre man And then the progression was into automotive batteries. Since then, we sort of supply batteries for pretty much everything— watches, clocks, cars, lorries.
The joys, the joys of actually interviewing real people in the real world with a real business.
So as I was saying, we supply batteries for cars, motorbikes, watches, pretty much everything really. We even build packs for portable power supplies, you know, drills or that type of thing.
Okay. And are they rechargeable? Are they the rechargeable types? Or I mean, is there a difference when you make them, the difference between rechargeable and non-rechargeable? Or Um, I guess, yeah.
Okay, we do both. We do, we do what they call primary cells, and the reason they're called primary cells is because when they were, when they were first invented, the secondary cell, they charged batteries with the— oh, I'm making a mess of this— they charge batteries with the Original battery with a— they built primary cells and they charged rechargeable batteries with that and then flattened it and recharged it with another set. So you've got primary and secondary cell.
Oh, okay.
Does that make sense? So yeah, they didn't use electricity because they've got no mains electricity.
Yeah, yeah. So it just basically just flattens it down as it's shot.
So they use one battery to charge another battery. So you use the primary cell to charge the secondary cell.
Okay, okay, all right, that makes sense. So tell us what your business superpower is.
Staff. Okay.
The staff, the staff are our superpower. Without the team, the business is nothing. We can't exist. And they are the experts within the company. I know lots about batteries, but they do too. So combined, it's them.
Right. That makes a huge amount of sense because it's them that's making the product, isn't it? It's them that's actually empowering— not empowering, you know, empowering their knowledge is what I was going to say, but it is kind of when you're making something and you're building it and then you're sending it out there. It's— yeah, it's— yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I think the other thing is we all pull in the same direction. We go a long way to make sure that we've got company principles right, that we've got mission statement right, so that we're all doing the same thing. Okay, so all the green, all the corporate responsibility, social responsibility the team all have input into.
So can you tell us a bit about how you engage your staff and suppliers and customers with your mission and purpose?
To start with, we're a lean company, so we work on the— we work on— I hope you can do edit this.
I can do.
We adopted about 5 years ago a system of total quality which has been developed by a guy in America called Paul Akers called 2 Second Lean. And it's about everybody in the company making a 2-second saving every day. And so all those little savings make the whole a lot better. Because we do that, because we're focused on improving everything and everybody's improving everything, we pull together as a team because we're all going in the same direction and the company all becomes better.
Okay, so do you have regular team meetings then or company meetings? How does How does that work? How do you communicate with each other?
Okay, so, um, every, every morning for half an hour we do what we call 3S— sweeps, sweep, sort, and standardize— where we either clean, tidy things, and that might be everything tidy from a spreadsheet to a, to a untidy desk. And then standardize. So we're trying to make sure that everybody's using the same system. So, for example, in the whole of the company, we all use the same sort of floor cleaner, for example.
Right.
So everything, everything's a standard. I don't know.
No, that makes sense.
And so, sorry, then what we do, we have a meeting, but probably takes another half hour. So I'll take an hour— all the staff take an hour out the day to basically work on the company.
And that's every Monday?
No, every day.
Oh, every day. Okay, wow. Okay.
Every day, you know. And in that meeting, we talk about where we've gone wrong, where we've gone right. We praise each other, we praise each other for things that are worth praising. We look at mistakes and see how we can gain from them. We look at things we've done well and see if we can do more of them.
Okay. Okay, that's, um, yeah, that's really, that's really useful. I think for, um, it's that communications, isn't it? Talking to, talking to staff on a regular basis and, um, also being involved with the company on a regular basis. So therefore you are very much, you're, you are with the company, you're working with the company, you're not working against it or You know, for it. You're working with the business because it's that buy-in, it's that wanting to work inside the business for the business's benefit is how it helps a business overall, really.
I think it certainly brings us all together as a team, and it appears mad that I should It's a big ask to take everybody's day and take an hour out of it to work on the business, but it worked for us. Yeah, and it empowers the staff and it grows the staff.
There's a really good book called Reinventing Organizations that talks about— talks about the different stages of businesses and where we've come from within business and organizations and where we're going towards. And to cut a long story short, a part of that is what you've just mentioned within it, within the final tiers of organizations. Because I mean, it all just sounds— it's like you almost exasperatingly said, it's not rocket science. It's, you know, This is kind of the way it is, and I think that's why it works for you. It's because you know that it just makes an awful lot of sense.
Yeah, but you know, from the outside, we've probably got 20 staff, so we've got— we're taking 20 staff every day, 20 hours a day. Working on the business. That's very powerful. Yeah, a bit frightening, isn't it? Yeah, taking 20 hours out of your production every day.
Yeah, yeah. I know we've got a— we do timekeeping and timestamp, and we expect of all of us, or particularly most people who are working for the business rather than me who's working on the business, It's 60, I think it's 63, 64% billable hours, which actually equates to what, 36%, 26% of your time working on the business. Which is probably pretty similar to where you are with that.
Yeah.
And we're a consultancy, so therefore it's there's lots of questions that you're fielded that aren't within the remit, etc. So therefore that's all added on to that and within it. So when it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business, what has been your biggest struggle so far, and can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?
I don't know that we've particularly had a that much of a struggle. If you look at the, um, the green side, or ethically being green, um, if you, if you aren't— which I am, I try and, I try and be green because I, I think that it's our world and why would we, why would you want to break it? But If you look at the ethos around let's cut our carbon footprint, it actually saves money. Well, why wouldn't you want to save money? Even if you want to damn the world, why do you want to spend money to do it? So from that point of view, that's really easy.
Yeah.
What else ethically? We, we do, um, quite a bit of corporate social responsibility. We help, um, I don't know, we do some work with the local college, Portland College, that's for people with learning difficulties generally, disabled people. Um, But it's rewarding. So somebody said that the reward of doing what you're doing is the doing.
Right.
And so there's a reward. Well, you know, if I am running an ethical company, and that's not perhaps where the focus was, I think that you've got to help your customers And all the people around us are our customers. We tend to, we tend to try and help people around locally. Um, but it's rewarding. It's not difficult.
Yeah.
So, um, I don't know that I've got many challenges. It's easy.
I love it.
It's nice.
That's brilliant. I love that answer. It's funny about the saving money, isn't it? And because that's exactly the same argument that we use with people that don't care about the environment. Why would I bother? And it's exactly what you've just said. And it does, for the most part, save money. It also increases— can you increase money? But, you know, it makes you leaner. So therefore Your future decisions are more likely to be better and more in line with your business than previous decisions.
Yeah, I suppose at times it helps you keep up with technology, you know, if you can put in a set of LED lighting instead of the old strip lighting. Yeah, generally probably brighter anyway. It's probably lit better, it works better.
Yeah, yeah.
So you've not only got the benefit of saving the world, you've got the benefit of— it's just better, it's brighter.
I love the fact that you've just used saving the world. One of my colleagues, Alex, in a previous meeting— we're currently going through a Not structure, but making sure that we've got everything in place for growth and how to get to where we want to get to. And so what is it that everyone wants out of this business? And his comment was, I think we're saving the world. And I think I love it, the fact that you've used that twice. It's brilliant. If you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners, which could help them with their purpose, what would that be?
Which would help them with the purpose? I suppose it depends what the purpose is. I think that, um, sometimes you've got to go against the flow. I think that probably going against the flow is better. So if everybody's If everybody's saying let's not go green, then go green. If everybody doesn't wear bow ties, then wear a bow tie. And maybe you need to stand out from the crowd a bit.
I think your— yeah, your bow tie certainly makes you do that, Richard. I love it.
Thank you.
Can you tell us about how you approach environmental management and your carbon footprints at County Battery?
Yeah, we— some years ago, I'd looked at this. I was concerned about the carbon footprint, and we had nothing to measure it with. We hadn't— we had no— there was nothing in place to measure it. This was before we did lean, and I was at a bit of a loss. And then this— a program came out called Investors in Environment, which we joined. And basically, they, they give you a couple of students who come and look at your business, take some measurements, come back with a report and say maybe you can do this, or If you put LED lighting in, for example, or if you were to put a smaller fridge in, or do this, that, and the other, it would cut your emissions. So we did that, and because of that, we've got, we've got a set of metrics going back 5 years on what we've saved each year and how we've moved up the moved up the path. I have looked before at ISO 9002. I think it's probably a bit more complicated, and we, we're not very good at complicated.
Do you mean— sorry to— but do you mean ISO 9001, the total quality management system, or ISO 14001, the environmental management Yeah, sorry, thanks for correcting me.
Yeah, 14001.
Yeah, I had a feeling you meant 14001, but you've also talked about the TQM model, which is the ISO 9001 model as well.
Well, the system that we used is Toyota's quality management system.
Which is what ISO 9001 is built Oh yeah, yeah. They actually sit— I mean, we, we don't necessarily work on businesses with ISO 9001, or rather implement ISO 9001, but I have a good knowledge of it because quite a lot of businesses do have it, and they sit very well together for exactly what you said previously of you save money, it's lean, it's, you know, they fit totally with each other and have, although have different outcomes, have similar— or rather have different outcomes but similar ways of doing things in between, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Like I said before, the issue to start with is you need to measure where you are. Yeah, because if you don't know where you are, you don't know if you've improved or not.
Yeah, and that comes with absolutely everything, I think.
Yeah.
Is there any advice or learning you'd like to share with anyone listening to this, um, podcast?
Yeah, I'm learning. Yeah, we have, we have a system at work where we encourage staff to read books.
Okay.
So, so we, we have a set of books that, um, we have a set of books that we have a library at work Yeah. With both an audio library and a hard book library.
Right.
We encourage staff to read books. And we— I read books. I read books every day. I like to walk the dog, and while I'm walking the dog, I plug in my phone. And, um, I have an hour listening to, um, uh, Jim Collins this morning. I was listening to Jim Collins.
Who's— I don't know Jim Collins.
Um, Good to Great.
Sorry?
He wrote the book Good to Great.
Okay, okay.
It's a business book, but we have, we have all sorts of things in the library. There's, there's, um, Everything. There's, uh, Chip Paradox. There's, um, there's even Mein Kampf, just in case.
Okay.
I think reading, reading, um, expands knowledge.
It does. And I think, um, I mean, listening to podcasts on the move and listening to audiobooks on the move I travel a lot with work and it's just such a good way to learn, isn't it? I mean, audiobooks— I was a bit— not a bit like, I'd rather read a book than listen to audiobooks, but I've quickly got into it. Actually, audiobooks works quite well.
It is when you're on the move. Yeah, it's brilliant. Like you say, podcasts are good as well. There's a lot of information on Yeah, loads.
I've learned loads from different industry experts out there. Actually, a good one I'm listening to at the moment is Planet Pod. They do a really good podcast on a different subject on every podcast, and it's all environmental. And it's— we've actually had a previous person, Leilani, who was actually on Planet Pod. She's a client of ours and has been on both. But yeah, look at— have a look, listen to that one. They're really good, actually.
Right.
But so thanks for today, and thanks for sharing and imparting knowledge to our listeners. Is there any way that we can learn more from you? I mean, have you got Have you got a website to go to? Is there, is there a place that we can get some more information on what it is that you do?
Yeah, well, website is www.countybattery.co.uk. We have a, we have a morning meeting every morning from 9 till 9:30. If you'd like to come and visit You'd be very welcome.
Is that an invite to all of our listeners or just to me?
It goes to the world.
It goes to the world. Brilliant. I love that.
So come and visit us if you want to know more, if you want to know what we do, if you want to watch us building batteries, if you want to see how we scrap them, how we, how we recycle them, if you want to see what we do with new ones. If you want to just see how to implement a lean culture, then please come and visit us.
You know, I will definitely be taking you up on that because I know that we've got a plan to run— I think you're in the Nottingham area, aren't you?
Yeah.
Yeah, I thought so. And Charlie, who does our marketing, is in your area, so we've got a plan for me to come and visit actually and do a talk. So I will absolutely be taking you up on that because I'd be really, really interested. We use batteries everywhere. I mean, I'm looking at my desk and I can see 1, 2, 3 batteries just on my desk alone.
Yeah, yeah, it's brutal.
Well, thank you very much for today. It's been, it's been absolutely, yeah, it's been really interesting actually listening to how you run your business and what it is that you're doing to help environmentally and how you're incorporating your beliefs to— within the organization as well. So thank you, Richard. Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
It's been great.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
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