FORMER Rangers finance director David Jolliffe has been appointed to lead a renewables start-up launched by Clydebank audio-visual and solar power specialist Campbell and Kennedy.

Circosense was spun out of Campbell & Kennedy (C&K) last month and has already struck a major deal with Renfrewshire council for 77 of its hot water management systems to be installed at council buildings. The units can cut energy costs associated with hot water by 30 per cent.

Mr Jolliffe, who was at the Ibrox club between 2003 and 2006, outlined ambitions to install 1,500 of the smart devices in year one, growing staff from 12 to 50 in the process.

If year one targets are met, he said the company will waste no time in expanding into the export market.

“The 1,500 unit is a high target, but it’s a key target for us,” said Mr Jolliffe. “After that it’s a case of asking, what level of progression can we get to?” he said. “There are huge numbers of large property owners across the UK – look at breweries with tied facilities, hotel chains. We’d like to get the UK model working properly, then look at how quickly we get can it overseas. If we hit the year one target then we’ll start [exporting] next year.”

The technology was created by Andy Strang, who is now commercial director of the business. After a successful trial in his own home, he launched Circosense with C&K managing director Gerry Kennedy.

Mr Jolliffe, who joined Circosense as managing director earlier this month, said the firm would operate autonomously, saying: “C&K is a different type of business, so we need to get new people on board and grow our own identity.”

The company’s technology has been designed to be retrofitted in hospitals, schools, hotels and other commercial and industrial buildings.

The kit, which is around the size of two shoeboxes, is fitted to an existing hot water system, where it takes control of the flow of hot water, learning usage patterns and managing the pump that distributes hot water around a building.

Mr Jolliffe revealed that C&K had invested “several hundred thousand” pounds to get the product to market.

“The big thing is that it is unique; it’s new, patented technology that gives us a real advantage in the market,” said Mr Jolliffe.

In addition to working under Sir David Murray at Rangers, Mr Jolliffe spent time at Aviagen – a company that used technology to reduce costs and improve production in chicken rearing, and at Pyroguard, a manufacturer of fire-resistance glass.

“Aviagen had the best product on the market – the Crufts of the chicken world, the average Aviagen bird produced more eggs, which had huge advantages, even today half of all chicken meat in the world comes from Aviagen technology – because they had something unique.”

He said that there were parallels between that and Circosense.

“If you don’t have a unique product today, you can do an awful lot but you’re not going to get that next level of market penetration. So the chance to get into something where you could potentially take a big, big, share of the market, because you’ve got a new and innovative product, that’s what excited me about Circosense.”

Mr Jolliffe said he would draw on his 30 years of business experience in building the business into an international success story.

As for Rangers, these days Mr Jolliffe said he is just a keen observer. “When I joined Rangers the debt was £80m and when I left it was £4.5m,” he said. “That was a long time back, Alex McLeish was manager, we won a couple of championships.

“My focus was to get the business cash positive and we did that every year I was there.”