Main Share Offer

We did it! £700,000 raised to build clean, sustainable energy from the Thames in Reading! Thank you to all our Shareholders!

Reading Hydro CBS opened its Main Share Offer between 30th December 2019 and 14th February 2020. The offer aimed to raise £700,000 to build two Archimedes screw turbines, rated at 46kWh output, on the Thames in Reading.

Reading Hydro CBS has successfully raised its £700,000 target, 2 weeks ahead of its scheduled close date.
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Reading Hydro CBS []

Open Until 26th August 2020

Our Main Share Offer Story

Reading Hydro CBS opened its Main Share Offer on the 30th December 2019, looking to raise £700,000.

How did it all start?

Our Hydro project has been going since 2016, and for the duration of this period we had been dealing with various technical and permissions aspects of commissioning a hydroelectric scheme on the Thames.

It became clear towards the end of 2019 that a decision to move to our Main Share Offer was needed, and at our October 2019 board meeting, we agreed to move ahead with a community share offer.

The work involved in spinning up something like this from fresh should not be underestimated. A significant amount of effort was required from the Board to plan out the various aspects required, including:

  • The financial modelling and costings for the project as a whole
  • The required technical aspects of the screw system and civils engineering
  • The communications piece in regards to advertising, managing contact with potential investors, creating events
  • The administration of taking details, payments, helping resolve any issues that may arise during the offer period

In addition, we needed help from our skilled membership to ensure things like content, PR, Social Media and our website looked at their best for launch. We also needed to support these things throughout the share offer period as our plans changed and adapted. Thanks to Rachel, Song, Chris E, Stuart and Chris B for all their efforts in supporting the Board with these crucial areas!

We put out to tender and chose Sharenergy to help us run the share offer administration. Their experience in managing community share offers for energy projects made them the ideal partner for Reading Hydro. Together, along with our community members, we prepared to launch our share offer just before 2020. You can see our Sharenergy landing page on the right

Going Live!

We opened for shares pre-registration through Sharenergy on the 15th December 2019, allowing investors to reserve their shares and obtain a preference in case of over-subscription. This ‘soft-launch’ allowed us to obtain commitments of £250,000 before we even went live!

Our live launch day on the 30th December was held at our site by Caversham Weir in Reading. We invited our membership to support our big launch and BBC News South to come and find out more about the offer. You can see some photos and our TV spot below.

Reading Hydro & Thames Lido
Members meeting at our site
Reading Hydro Board
Our event was a huge success, with BBC coverage!
Our advertising banner at our site
The open share offer period

We had a great start with pre-registration, but we still had half a million pounds to go and a few short weeks in January and early February to raise what we needed. There were several strands of work on the go to draw in the funds:

  • Social media campaigns, with daily messaging all about us, the technology and the benefits to Reading across Facebook, Twitter & Instagram
  • Pop-up stands and Q&A events in Reading, where directors made themselves available to present on and answer questions about the Share Offer and Reading Hydro
  • Gearing up the membership through our weekly newsletters and call-outs for help to deliver our Share Offer leaflets through doors across Reading

In addition, we also were able to agree investment of up to £100,000 from Co-operatives UK & Power to Change, two of our Institutional Investors. Our investment total started to climb – £700,000 was only a matter of time!

Reading Hydro Pop-up at Reading Farmer’s Market
Our Share Offer Leaflets
Share Offer evening at Watlington House
Over-Subscription & reAssessment

We hit our fundraising target on January 31st – £700,000 two weeks ahead of schedule! We almost couldn’t believe it! As per the terms of the share offer period, we stayed open until the 14th February and end our fundraising period with £8[],000 subscribed! £1[],000 over our target!

As with all projects, there were some unknowns that we needed to contend with. It became clear by middle of February that our civil engineering costs were going to significantly increase – this was because of increases in costs for our potential contractors to deal with accessing the site and dealing with the spoil. [another reason]. This meant we needed another £2[],000 above our original £700,000 target to ensure the project could go ahead.

We needed to reassess our financial models and identify savings where we could, and working with RenewablesFirst, we were able to come up with some solutions with our contractor, [],

We decided to take stock of this change with our members and shareholders. A big ([] people!) audio conference was held alongside our online AGM in March 2020 and the outcome was [positive]!

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