Summer sun’s shining on inventive ice-cream firm

THE world’s first solar-powered ice cream van has served a record 300,000 cones this year - thanks to the heat wave.

- FILIPA GASPAR

David Baker founder of luxury ice cream makers Styles Farm, of Rodhuish, Minehead, Somerset, built the van.

He disliked how much smoke was billowing from the vans when stationary due to the engine needing to be on for the ice cream machines to work.

The sun-charged van has been delivering cold treats to customers - without harming the planet.

Due to the amount of sunshine, the business has pumped out around 300,000 ice cream cones so far this year - a record amount.

Mr Baker is now fitting solar panels to his production dairy as well.

This summer has brought more sunny hours than normal, helping produce 30% of the power needed to make Mr Baker's ice cream.

Mr Baker said: “Without a doubt the amount of sunlight is crucial for the production of power.

“It’s all about how much sunlight there is. The solar panels that we put on the battery went live on the first of February.

“At the moment we have produced 33.1million watts since February.