Payments With Purpose: How Invinity Energy Systems PLC is supporting Local Communities and Scotland's Seas

Helen Mackenzie
3 days ago
4 min read

Some businesses talk about their values and supporting local communities. Others quietly get on with living them. Invinity Energy Systems PLC we view as falling firmly into the second camp.

When it came to choosing which causes their trading activity with GoodFX would support, they looked close to home in Scotland and decided to support nature through Sea Wilding and Local Communities through The Larder... We are very pleased to showcase the work here.

Introducing Invinity

Invinity manufactures vanadium flow batteries from its facilities in Bathgate and Motherwell in North Lanarkshire. The kind of long-duration energy storage technology that makes renewable power reliable enough to keep the lights on when the wind stops blowing and the sun dips below the horizon.

Their batteries are fully recyclable, non-flammable, and free from rare earth or conflict materials like cobalt. In short, they make clean energy cleaner. And when it came time to decide which causes their trading activity with GoodFX would support, they looked close to home; one cause above the water, one below it.

Where the money goes

GoodFX donates one-third of trading profits to a charity of the client's choice. This is not a premium, just a redistribution of normal business costs. Invinity nominated two local causes to support; SeaWilding, the award-winning marine conservation charity restoring Scotland's inshore waters, and The Larder West Lothian, a social enterprise fighting poverty and hunger with dignity in the communities surrounding Invinity's own factories.

Seawilding: Giving Scotland's seas a fighting chance

Seawilding is the UK's first community-based native oyster and seagrass restoration project, located in Loch Craignish, Argyll and Loch Broom, Wester Ross. Their aim is to restore lost biodiversity, sequester carbon, create green jobs, and mentor other community-based groups to do the same.

If that sounds ambitious, it's because it is. And it's working. They have already restored 350,000 native oysters to the loch and over the last two years have planted approximately 0.3 hectares of seagrass. Their best-practice restoration methodologies are also being rolled out to other coastal communities in Scotland.

Oysters are ecosystem engineers: they filter water, provide breeding grounds, and underpin entire marine food chains. Seagrass is equally vital, a carbon sink and biodiversity hotspot that has almost entirely vanished from UK coastal waters.

What makes Seawilding particularly compelling is the community at its core. Their youth group Seawildlings is open to all primary and high school aged children who live on the Craignish Peninsula, giving children an opportunity to enjoy healthy time outdoors while learning about and celebrating their coastal environment.

They're not just restoring a loch with this work, they're shaping the next generation of marine scientists and conservationists, one oyster survey at a time.

The Larder West Lothian: Changing Lives Through Food

If SeaWilding is about restoring what's been lost in Scotland's natural environment, The Larder is about restoring opportunity to the people who live and work in the communities where Invinity builds its batteries.

Founded by local entrepreneur Angela Moohan in 2010, The Larder fights poverty and hunger with dignity, providing food support, training and fair work opportunities to help local people transition from surviving to thriving.

Its programmes run the full spectrum from personal development training to employability skills, life skills, and health and wellbeing courses to sector skills courses for Hospitality, Health and Social Care and Customer Service with Qualification Scotland accreditation.

Since launch, the organisation has helped more than 3,000 people access training, delivered more than 200,000 meals to those in West Lothian experiencing food insecurity, and employs 30 local people. Those are not small numbers for a West Lothian community. These are neighbours, colleagues, people who might one day walk through the doors of a business like Invinity looking for their first real shot.

The food dimension matters too. The Larder's community meals programme offers a three-course meal for just £5 at cafés in Strathbrock and Blackburn. More than just food, they're a chance to connect, share stories and build stronger, more resilient communities. It's the kind of dignified, practical support that the cost-of-living crisis has made more important than ever.

A partnership that adds up

Here's the thing about the GoodFX model: it doesn't ask businesses to choose between doing well and doing good.

Invinity needed help with local collection accounts around the globe and how to manage its international currency requirements most effectively. This was the business need that had to be answered first.

Having empowered the business to push into localized impact, Invinity faced no additional CSR bureaucracy, while the charities faced no separate grant applications either.

Just the finance team quietly, consistently, generating impact every time a trade is made.

Invinity holds itself to high standards of sustainability and looks to make a significant contribution to local communities. Supporting SeaWilding and The Larder is proof that the company's values don't stop at the factory gate. And testimony to their belief that it is not enough to make the energy transition happen. It has to be a just transition - one that benefits local ecosystems and local people in equal measure.

Donna Wood, Global Finance Manager, Invinity:

"As a clean energy company, we are focused on delivering impact through both what we build and how we operate. This partnership allows us to extend that impact into the communities around our operations in a practical and scalable way, demonstrating how everyday business activities can support positive environmental and social outcomes”

We're proud to be part of it.