Towersey Festival

Towersey Festival worked with their power supplier Flying Hire to cut fuel use by almost a quarter across the site in 2018.

Flying Hire have provided power for Towersey for the last 4 years, each year working for greater efficiency, and pushing for the reduction of diesel. In 2018, a changed site plan gave the Flying Hire team the opportunity to work closely with Towersey to redesign their power plan, and achieve the significant fuel use reduction.

The new system involved building a miniature sub-station of synchronized generators and distributing all power from there; all the generators were synched on a load share demand basis for optimum running efficiency.

Planning was key to ensuring the transition would run smoothly; the team calculated the power needed around the main arena, the power being drawn, the load on cables and how this would affect the voltage. They reduced the number of generators from 14 the previous year to 8, and added an additional 3.2km of cabling in order to distribute the power. During the event fuel management for all the gen-sets was switched on and generators were monitored for optimum efficiency.

“For festivals that want to push on their green footprint, we would say work closely with your power provider and see how your setup can be made more efficient.” George Nearn, Flying Hire Ltd

Check out Powerful Thinking’s Five Tips for Smarter Power Contracts

Greenbelt Festival

Greenbelt Festival Aim for 100% Sustainable Power

Greenbelt is a weekend festival of ‘arts, faith and justice’ that has been running since 1974. In 2017 they had 11,000 people onsite for the 4-day event. Greenbelt has strong commitment to creating an environmentally sustainable festival by making their site more power efficient and looking for renewable sources of power.

After moving site to Boughton House, Northamptonshire, in 2013 they went from a festival site that was partially powered from the grid to one that required 100% onsite power. Initially they used diesel generators festival to power the site but they are now, “working towards a future when the festival is powered entirely from sustainable sources,” says Event Director Mary Corfield.

Helping the Greenbelt team on this journey is production company Judgeday and power supplier Gofer Ltd, who began working with the Greenbelt team in 2016 to help them achieve their sustainability goals around power. At the 2016 event they saved 2,000 litres of fuel and for 2017 they carefully planned their power needs saving a further 16% on fuel usage.

They achieved this through careful planning, understanding that, “data is knowledge,” they worked with their traders, suppliers, concessions and artists to get a clear picture of their expected power needs across the site. This knowledge allowed Gofer to model their event power use and create ‘power zones’, enabling them to reduce the size of generators, and in some cases clustering them together so that smaller generators could be used at times of low demand. They also continued to use LED festoon lighting and switched to LED floodlights to reduce power demand.

During the 2017 festival Greenbelt had two dedicated team members who monitored power use across the site to record power peaks and lows at different times of day and in different locations. This data gave them a practical understanding of energy demand throughout the festival and has allowed them to put energy efficiency plans in place for the next season with real confidence.

For the 2018 festival they are switching two whole areas from diesel to solar powered and two further areas will be powered with hybrid generators. They will replace half of their diesel tower lights with solar and the other half will be swapped for LED flood lights.

To reduce both transport costs and waste they rent an area on the site all year round to store staging, décor and furnishings. They have a policy of recycling and repurposing materials used in previous years and they have switched to generic (rather than year/theme specific) signage, which means they can be used year on year.

To further minimise waste Greenbelt has a re-usable cup scheme in their beer tents; their caterers use 100% compostable packaging work and food waste is collected and redistributed to local food bank charities. Greenbelt won a Greener Festival Awards in 2014, 2016 and 2017 for their environmental initiatives and they are part of the Vision: 2025 community of UK festivals who are working to reduce their environmental impacts. They also work with charity, Energy Revolution, to tackle the CO2 emissions associated with their audience travel by investing in projects that create renewable energy.

They have been recognised in the industry for their commitment to social inclusion and were awarded the Act of Independence award at AIF congress in 2017 for showcasing Muslim art and culture and platforming of Palestinian artists and activists. They hold the Gold Level on the Charter of Best Practice by ‘Attitude is Everything’ for their commitment to improving access for deaf and disabled festivalgoers.

The Greenbelt team believe passionately in the ability of individuals to come together and impact their communities and environment in a positive way; they plan to continue monitoring their environmental performance, innovating to find sustainable solutions, and sharing their experiences with the festival industry.

Glastonbury Festival

Comprehensive Energy Monitoring Project with Agrekko and UWE

Glastonbury Festival has been running since 1970, it has a capacity of 187,000 and runs annually for 5 days in June. As a large festival Glastonbury needs a lot of power, but the sustainability team at the festival set out to identify the environmental impacts of burning large volumes of diesel to generate this power and find ways of reducing them.

Since 2014, Glastonbury Festival, under the direction of Sustainable Energy Project Manager Rob Scully, have been has been carrying out a comprehensive energy-monitoring project in partnership with power contractor Aggreko and researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE). At each edition of the festival they monitor the output of generators onsite and analyse the data to see how efficiently the generators were being used in order to help specify correct sized generators for future festivals and to investigate energy saving and fuel saving options.

For the monitoring project a project office was set up right in the heart of the festival, in the power compound behind the Pyramid Stage. From this base, 126 generators on site were monitored wirelessly using the Aggreko Remote Monitoring system (ARM). A small team of engineering students and research staff also went out into the site to study particular areas in more depth. There were over 5 million items of data recorded in the monitoring allowing them to plot the ‘real time’ output for each machine.

The findings showed that a large proportion of the generators monitored were significantly oversized for their purpose. The most efficient range to run a generator is in a range of 40-80% of the capacity of the machine, at this ‘load’ the relationship between how much power you generate and how much fuel you burn is fairly linear. When the load on a generator reaches about 30% of the machine size the amount of diesel being burnt per kW of power produced starts to go up. A generator running below 10% of capacity is very inefficient and can effectively be wasting 60% or more of the diesel per kWh of energy used.

In order to ensure efficient peak loads on generators at Glastonbury Festival Aggreko uses ‘power stations’ to create power zones in some areas of the site – these stations are a grouped set of generators that are turned on as power demand goes up and then are turned off at times of low demand.

To further increase efficiency Glastonbury also trialled using battery hybrid units onsite, which store energy in onboard battery banks to be used during periods of low demand. The hybrid switches off the main generator automatically when demand drops and silently takes up the load, it can then restart the generator when the batteries are depleted or when demand outstrips capacity. It can also act as a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), stepping in to ensure continuity of base load if the generator stops unexpectedly.

The main challenge with using hybrid units was identifying areas with a suitable load profile, i.e. places with reasonable periods of low demand when the generator could be switched off and battery power could be used. Areas where these conditions were met included build & break operations and vehicle gates. Before the installation of the hybrid battery units the generators in these areas were running inefficiently, they were on 24 hours per day to maintain continuity of power but were producing very low energy (kWh) per hour of runtime — only 1-4 kWh per hour. After installing the hybrid units the generators were switched off automatically drastically reducing runtime to just 2-4 hours per day in order to produce the same amount of energy. This energy was then distributed from the hybrid unit’s battery storage over the course of the day leading to a much higher kWh per hour of generator runtime — up to 130 kWh per hour.

For areas of the site where the power demands are very low Glastonbury have also had success in powering them completely with renewable energy. In the Green Fields coordinators camp they have used a 1.5 kW solar unit with 22 kWh of battery storage to run the area without problems. Previously, the camp was connected by a long cable to share a diesel generator in another field, and had experienced power outages when that machine stopped. So we can see that when correctly matched with the demand, renewables can actually be more reliable than a conventional diesel generator setup.

Into the Great Wide Open

Into the Great Wide Open (ITGWO) is a Dutch Festival with an audience of 7,000, which takes place on the Island of Vlieland on the northwest coast of the Netherlands. In 2016, they switched from diesel to 2^nd generation biofuels (fuel derived solely from recycled organic waste matter, distributed and sold by the company GoodFuels) to power the generators used at the festival, reducing the amount of CO2 produced in the onsite energy production of the festival by 85%.

The organisers of ITGWO are committed not only to making their festival sustainable, but to exploring how festivals can be used as a catalyst for bigger societal changes. In order to do this they set up a foundation, in 2013, called Lab Vlieland through which they pioneer and develop sustainability projects in the temporary world of their and other festivals, then find ways to implement their successes on a wider basis; first as a permanent part of island life in Vlieland, then to the mainland with the ultimate goal of speeding up global transition to a sustainable society.

Their switch from diesel to biofuel was taken as an intermediary step on their journey to sustainability. Biofuel use has many implications, which must be considered, and they realise that it is not a perfect solution. Ideally they would like to establish a grid connection and power the festival via the mains on a green energy tariff. However, for now this is not a viable option; festivals have very high peaks of energy demand necessitating large connections — these are expensive to install and run partly due to the nature of Dutch energy law, which means Energy Providers have inflexible charging structures that do not account for temporary connections with fluctuating demand.

Provenance is also an issue that means biofuel is not a long-term solution; despite the integrity of their sourcing — using fuel which comes only from organic waste streams — Lab Vlieland is aware that the total organic waste matter volume is not high enough to meet future demands for the biofuel it is used to produce. Biofuel is also more expensive and there are additional costs for transport. Despite these drawbacks and considerations the use of biofuels is a great step forward in terms of reducing fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions from the event.

Lab Vlieland’s first hurdle in implementing their switch was to find a biofuel source that is reliable and ethical and that their generator supplier, F&L, was willing to use in their machines. ITGWO/Lab Vlieland have a good relationship with F&L, who they have worked with since 2009 over 8 editions of the festival. F&L are a small progressive firm, meaning lines of communication are short and creative solutions are relatively easy to implement and they agreed to trial the switch provided the biofuels quality was high enough. In the end a biofuel (B100) from ‘Good Fuels’ was chosen for it’s quality, reliability and ethical means of production.

The use of biofuels in diesel generators is not completely straightforward, normally generators are hired partially full from the previous event and are returned in the same way, so the event only pays for the diesel they have used, and organisers don’t have to worry about predicting fuel use accurately — they can take extra fuel and return the excess, only paying for what they use. When using biofuel the generators needed to be completely drained of fossil diesel before they could be filled to ensure pure biofuel use (mixing is technically not a problem, except that you are still burning a mix of fossil and non-fossil fuels) – and they needed to be returned empty.

This not only involved extra logistics but also meant that Lab Vlieland had to accurately predict how much biofuel the festival would need, as any left over would have to be stored or would be wasted. They partially solved this problem by agreeing to sell any remainder to another festival looking to move to biofuel but in the end they were so accurate in their estimates that this measure wasn’t necessary.

The next issue that they came up against was transportation: Land infrastructure is entirely fossil fuel orientated; diesel can be acquired from the nearest pump to the festival site and transported in the containers that it is then stored in for the duration of the festival. The biofuel had to be transported from much further away and then transferred into separate storage containers incurring extra costs and planning.

The saving of 85% of CO2 emissions from fuel use in onsite energy production in 2016 compared to 2015 would have been higher but in 2015 ITGWO used significantly less diesel than average due to bad weather and resulting stage closure. They also used 500 litres of fossil diesel onsite because the rental agency would not agree to use biofuel in their onsite vehicles (forklifts etc.).

ITGWO used 8,000 litres of biofuel in 2016, at 40 cents more per litre than diesel, plus €800 for transport logistics resulting in a €4,000 spend compared to diesel— a cost which will hopefully be mitigated in the future as more festivals follow suit and infrastructures, generator suppliers and biofuel providers adapt to suit the growing market.

For ITGWO the environmental benefits outweighed the financial implications of the switch but they continue to search for more efficient means to power their festival including ongoing negotiations with the government regarding reforms to Dutch energy laws to make it cost effective for temporary events to run from the grid.

De Parade Amsterdam

De Parade saves 27% of diesel use in one year

Dutch festival De Parade Amsterdam worked with energy consultant, Watt Now to save 15,300 litres (27%) of diesel in 2016 compared to the previous year, by monitoring and reducing fuel use.

De Parade Amsterdam is a theatre festival that takes place in the Martin Luther King Park. It runs for 16 days and has an audience of approximately 100,000. Other editions of De Parade take place in Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague.

Watt Now’s first step in working with the festival was to conduct a complete inventory during the 2015 edition to find out exactly what energy demands were being made and where, including lighting, catering, acts and venues, and how much diesel was being used by generators to meet these demands. As a theatre Festival De Parade has complex lighting demands and with each act energy use fluctuates so these needs have to be met reliably to ensure the performances run smoothly.

With these figures established Watt Now estimated the energy for the 2016 edition and, in collaboration with generator supplier Bredenoord, redesigned the generator arrangement to be more efficient; instead of the 7 big sets used in 2015 they used 14 smaller generators, arranged in groups of three, that switched on and off based on the load. As smaller generators are less expensive to hire they used the cost savings to hire smart distribution boxes to connect the generators (installed power supply went from 4000 kVA in 2015 to 2450 kVA in 2016).

As a result of these measures De Parade Amsterdam saved 15,300 litres of diesel (27%) in 2016 compared to 2015. Watt Now will continue to work with De Parade for the 2017 edition and they predict that a further 7% saving can be achieved. To further improve accuracy of reporting and maximum generator efficiency in 2017, Watt Now plan to conduct real-time monitoring of the generator settings and performance throughout the festival.

De Parade in Utrecht has led the way in fuel use savings by securing a government grant to fund a connection to the grid to completely power the festival. This is an avenue that Watt Now are keen to explore for De Parade in Amsterdam, and for other festivals across the city, and there is a growing movement for local governments to fund grid connections for outdoor events — with festivals such as De Parade now able to provide accurate energy data it is possible to predict usage and cost savings, enabling the local government to size grid connections accurately and gauge the financial viability of such projects.

www.deparade.nl/ams/
www.watt-now.nl
www.bredenoord.com/en/

Cambridge Folk Festival

Relationship with Energy Supplier is Key to Reduction

Cambridge Folk Festival has been running since 1965, it takes place in July and has a capacity of 14,000. The Festival is committed to reducing the environmental impact of the event and have found that a strong relationship with their energy supplier, Pearce Hire, is key to reduction.

Cambridge Folk Festival have worked with Pearce Hire for over 30 years and they have come to understand the Festival’s environmental and ethical values. They work closely with the festival’s Sustainability Coordinator and the Production Manager, to continually improve on energy efficiency, introduce new innovations and to meet the criteria for the A Greener Festival accreditations, which the festival holds.

As Pearce Hire provide both power and lighting, they can invest in more efficient lighting, knowing that their investment will be subsidized by the resulting reduction in generator size and fuel costs. They are also uniquely placed to identify where and when to turn on/off generators and therefore save fuel.

Over the years they have introduced a number of innovations in lighting: adding photocells sensors, manufactured in-house, to switch site lighting on and off at dawn and dusk as required, resulting in huge savings in energy use and cost. They also swapped power-hungry tungsten floodlights for LED and festoon lighting site-wide, and supplied LED fixtures for stage lighting — next year they are looking to invest in some new LED profile moving head fixtures.

Generators used onsite are all Euro Stage Three compliant — one of the most energy efficient, low emission generators you can get and they are arranged in an efficient system of many smaller generators rather than two big sets. The festival is also partially run off mains electricity, supplied through a green tariff, which saves 12-15,000 litres of diesel per event and makes a massive saving on the carbon footprint. Meter readings are taken every three hours during the festival so that the carbon footprint can be accurately calculated and the festival’s major impacts can be identified and improvements made where necessary.

The Festival encourages all staff and vendors to ‘switch off ’ when possible; punters are asked to reuse plastic cups to reduce litter and waste; backstage, water coolers are used instead of plastic bottles. The Festival commission wildlife investigations of the site and go to great lengths to protect local waterways, land and the biodiversity of the area from negative impacts of the event.

Over the last five years Cambridge Folk Festival have reduced their diesel usage by a third. These achievements are a testament to what can be achieved when supplier and festival teams bring mutual commitment and prioritise reducing their environmental impact.

www.cambridgelivetrust.co.uk
www.pearcehire.co.uk

Latitude, Leeds & Reading

Festival Republic: Energy Management at Reading, Leeds and Latitude Festivals.

Festival Republic is a leading UK music events producer with a portfolio of 19 music festivals across Europe, including Download, Latitude, V Festival, Reading, Leeds and Electric Picnic Festivals. More than half a million people attend the festivals they own and co-produce each year.

Festival Republic are committed to understanding and reducing the environmental impact of their festivals but this case study focuses on the challenges and successes of their commitment to reducing CO2 emissions from energy use at Leeds, Reading and Latitude.

Their sustainability policy includes using waste vegetable oil biodiesel to power the festivals’ generators. Between 2010 and 2011 they increased the amount of biodiesel used at Leeds from 18.5% to 24.5%, and at Reading from 12.5% to 18.2% in 2012. This commitment continues despite there being limited biodiesel supply in parts of the country, unpredictable price fluctuations, and a higher cost for sustainable biodiesel in comparison to regular diesel. They now aim for biofuel to make up 15% of the total fuel burned on site, in line with the Julies Bicycle benchmark, and are investigating into fuel efficiency measures to reduce the amount of fuel they use in the first instance.

Festival Republic requires their energy contractor to monitor generators and provide data on the actual fuel consumption after the festival. Based on the data collected, Festival Republic is working to reduce the size and/or number of generators to better match their energy needs and be more efficient about their fuel use. In 2015 Leeds and Latitude Festival were able to reduce the overall size of the generators compared to 2014 and this was achieved even though there was an increase in the festivals infrastructure. 2016 is the fourth year of data they have collected and are working closely with their power suppliers to see if this can be used to make further energy efficiency savings.

In 2015 Festival Republic explored alternative and new energy technologies such as hybrid generators and solar power. They also hired solar powered batteries that can be linked to generators to reduce the generator run-time. After a trial at Latitude, one of the power contractors has invested in a number of these batteries tailored to their technical needs to add to their own fleet, showing that Festival Republic’s dedication is indirectly supporting fuel efficiency in the broader events industry. Combining the two different technologies has been challenging, requiring training for the engineers in the field and dedication from the teams. The initiative is not yet financially viable, but Festival Republic continues to invest to support this kind of knowledge exchange between solar power and generator companies.

Festival Republic works with their contractors to reduce energy demand through specifying more energy efficient technologies; for example, in 2012, Colour Sound Experiment, one of their lighting and visuals rental companies, invested in 1.5 km of LED festoon lighting in response to demand from Reading Festival. The Festival Republic technical production teams work with their audio, video, and sound companies to improve communication around power specs and energy requirements to encourage broader industry conversation about ‘what’s actually needed’ at festivals.

At Latitude in 2015, the audience was engaged around the topic of energy and sustainability through a partnership with De Montfort University’s ‘Face your Elephant’ project. The audience were also physically acquainted with energy awareness through cycle-powered phone charging stations to promote renewable energy in a creative way.

Since 2009, Leeds and Reading festivals have reduced their total carbon emissions significantly, by more than 20% per audience day. In 2015, Latitude and Leeds were awarded a Creative Industry Green rating of four stars and Reading has achieved three stars since 2013. 2016 was the first year in which Download and V Festival were assessed and at the time of writing this case study the results are awaited.

The Green Gathering

Engaging the community in using renewables

The Green Gathering is a festival with an environmental and social justice focus; it has workshops and talks on permaculture, politics, ecology and crafts, as well as art, live music and spoken word performances. It currently has a capacity of 5,000 and takes place in Chepstow, Monmouthshire.

The Green Gathering is proudly run on 100% renewable energy solutions. Throughout the years the organisers have faced and overcome many challenges in producing a festival with no generators. Many of the solutions to problems in this area have come from successfully engaging their community of audience, traders and suppliers in a shared commitment to operating sustainably.

To providing lighting for the festival without using generators they switched to 100% LED lighting throughout, which was a bigger challenge that it sounds due to an initial lack of suppliers of relevant products. Over the years they have engaged suppliers to build up a list of companies who can step in to provide the right products in the right quantities onsite.

Wheelchair and mobility scooter charging using renewable technology was a challenge to overcome as The Green Gathering’s Assisted Access camping area filled up and demand grew. The festival implemented a number of solutions in 2014, ranging from bringing in extra solar power providers to communicating with the audience to inform them to arrive with batteries and spares fully charged, and by stipulating charging times. These measures were so successful that in 2015, The Green Gathering was able to extend its Assisted Access area further with confidence that the audience’s energy needs could be catered for.

“Informing and engaging customers is vital to keeping them on board and positive about running on renewables, especially if being ‘green’ means they can’t have exactly what they want when they want it!”

The Green Gathering requires traders to be 100% renewably powered, ethical and offer a quality product or menu. For traders who meet these criteria but usually run on mains electric, advice and information is on offer to help them go ‘off grid’. In some cases traders can be linked up with the festival’s regular renewable power providers who may, for a small charge (or free meals!) be able to provide the power needed. The festival’s Green Markets coordinator also provides information to cafes about low-energy equipment and menus if they are keen to make the switch to renewables.

“The Green Gathering community has a number of solar and LED experts who can advise traders to help them trade off grid not just for this event but at all events, so that everyone benefits in the longer term. It’s largely about engaging with the traders.”

The people who come together to create and co-ordinate the festival have built up rich resources of knowledge and are keen to share their skills and experience to benefit not only the festival but also the wider world, through empowering people to be environmentally responsible and resilient.

Many thanks to The Green Gathering for providing the information for this case study.

Website: greengathering.org.uk

The Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company

Cafe Mor: A revolutionary off-grid catering concession

Pembrokeshire Beachfood has traded at Freshwater West Beach since 2013, a site that is managed by the National Park and the National Trust. Their Cafe Môr trailer offers a range of high quality food inspired by West Wales produce. In March 2015, they won a Sustainable Development Fund (SDF) support from Pembrokeshire National Park Authority to test out an approach that could revolutionise the catering concessions industry and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

Their remote site had no grid connection and, until the start of the project, electrical power was provided by a generator during the day and a hook up at a local farm by night. The SDF support was used to part fund the installation of solar PV panels and a small wind turbine, along with a solar inverter and a battery bank. The system removed the need for a noisy, carbon-fuelled petrol generator by day, and reduced electrical demand at night (with mains electricity used to top up the batteries if required, rather than being the sole source of power at night).

Instant benefits to the business included a reduction in generator noise, less staff time required for generator operation and maintenance, fewer trading days lost due to generator issues and increased power security as a result of having a battery back up. In the longer term the new system will also considerably reduce operation costs: in 2014, Cafe Môr used around 1000 litres of petrol to fuel the generator, which cost around £1,300. Assuming the system is optimised to minimise mains battery charging to almost zero, benefits in terms of reduced petrol consumption, reduced staff time and reduced loss of trading could be in the region of £2,500 per year: the Cafe Môr system cost just £7,500, so this would give a payback time of around 3 years.

Payback times for systems mounted on vans or trailers used regularly at events could be even better. Initial indications based on a system with three days battery life plus wind or solar recharge, during an event of 7-10 days and assuming an electricity hook-up cost of £450+VAT per event, with 10 events per year, would mean the system would pay for itself in less than 2 years on a system costing up to £9000.

Of course this is not just about money — there is significant potential for the industry as a whole to reduce their impact on the environment, and particularly GHGs. 1000 litres of petrol is equivalent to 2.33 tonnes of GHGs per year. Scaled up across the industry of 10,000 units this amounts to a potential saving of 20,000 tonnes CO2e/yr.

The next stage of the project will monitor the electricity generated by the system to establish exactly how much the system generates and therefore how much mains charging is required, and future phases of the project will look at options for reducing the impact of LPG and vehicle fuel.

Thanks to The Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company and The Nationwide Caterers Association for providing the information for this case study.

Midas Productions

Waste Vegetable Oil is the Golden Touch for Bestival

Founded at the turn of the millennium, Midas Productions has been the power broker for biodiesel, running its generators exclusively on locally sourced waste vegetable oil.

Bestival is a prime example of the company’s capacity to turn a large-scale event on to WVO. Organisers Rob and Josie de Bank have been pushing a green agenda since the festival started in 2004 and Midas moved beyond the campsites to the Tomorrow’s World arena last summer, its second year at the festival, where the focus, aptly, is on a ‘fun, sustainable, inspirational future’.

Crucially, Midas’ continued investment in kit means it can accommodate its ever-busier contract diary, servicing events either side of Bestival and still hitting the tight deadline on the Isle of Wight, by way of example. “We are scrupulous in our priorities as a business, always putting money into generators, mains and distro, so we can continue to deliver in terms of time and quality,” Midas Director, Dave Noble, said.

Bestival Site Manager, Christina Von Bonin, is quick to praise the Midas touch. “It has dispelled the rumours that ‘bio-diesel doesn’t work’ or ‘the generators clog up’ and while the fuel is a bit more expensive than red diesel, we would certainly like to increase the amount we use, in small steps year-on-year,” she said. “It’s easy to work with Midas too, because it’s team is flexible, easy to get on with and straight talking.”

The complexity of the Bestival site means the contract is split between two suppliers, with Midas currently responsible for some 30per cent of the site. But the balance of power is shifting.