Interview: Everhot CEO Guy Goring on innovation, sustainability and growth

Heat storage range cookers may be a traditional segment of the market, but advances in technology are coming to them too – Amelia Thorpe talks to Everhot CEO Guy Goring about the latest products.

In an era of sleek built-in ovens and precisely controllable central heating, is there really a need for a heat storage range cooker anymore? "It is a niche product," admits Guy Goring, CEO of British manufacturer, Everhot. "But for those who want a heat storage range cooker and there’s a big chunk of people who do, we try to make sure that we are the first port of call." He cites the cooker’s radiant 24/7 warmth, its status as a homely kitchen centrepiece, its durability and moist, tasty cooking results as the key reasons for its continued popularity.   

The family-owned Everhot business was founded in 1979 by Guy’s engineer father, Ossie Goring, who wanted a cooker that would run on power generated by a water turbine below the 13^th-century Coaley Mill in Gloucestershire where they lived (and where the business is still headquartered today). Developed from the outset with energy efficiency in mind, the Everhot is an electric heat storage range cooker that still runs of a 13amp plug. "We try to be the most energy efficient heat storage range cooker when left on 24/7 – and we are," says Goring, 56.

Now the cookers are manufactured in a factory about 3 miles away, powered by the water turbine which brought the original cooker to life and by a 250kW solar array. To maintain its carbon negative status, Everhot has planted 50,000 trees over 50 acres within a mile of the factory since 2012. Recent innovations include Everhot’s ‘fifth gen’ control box, which connects to home Wi-Fi, to allow owners to control and manage their cookers remotely, useful when returning from holiday or for customers with second homes.

Next, says Goring, will be a push to market the other features of the control box. "It has a ‘follow the sun’ feature, which is primarily aimed at homes with solar panels, so the cooker can be programmed in the summer to wake up with the sun and go to sleep with the sun," he explains. "Probably 50% of our customers have solar panels and we are really the only cooker which works well with them, because of our trickle feed design." Another feature is a smart energy tariff function: the cooker can be set to automatically look for when electricity is cheapest. "We are also working on changes to the insulation level to improve the cooker’s efficiency," he adds.

Available in widths of 60 to 160cm, with and without induction tops, and in a choice of 20 colours – including the November launch of Clay – the Everhot has a leading position in the heat storage range cooker market (competitors include Aga and Esse), selling some 2,000 cookers per year. The cookers are sold through 110 kitchen retailers in the UK, with annual turnover currently around £12million. "We grew steadily for 25 years, but in the last 5 years, sales have gone up with the froth from Covid, when people were spending money on their houses, and now dropped down again with the state of the economy," he says.

In 2020, Everhot launched its electric stove, with and without a built-in oven. "Stoves now account for about 15% of our turnover, but about 50% in terms of units," says Goring. (Stove retail prices start from £1,299, cookers from £7,700 for a 60cm-wide model.) Next year, Everhot will launch a 50% larger version of the stove, designed to give out more heat and fill a bigger fireplace.

Goring anticipates future growth from developing export sales in markets such as Australia, New Zealand and America, as well as from the stoves collection. "The heat storage range cooker market hasn’t expanded for 30 years, overall it has contracted, so we have expanded in a declining market," he explains. "And a big reason for that is that more and more people in the UK are generating their own power – and our cookers work really well with solar panels, which is a real opportunity."