Directors at Ecotricity have hailed a "significant turnaround" for the green-energy business in 2018, with turnover up by £50 million.

According to accounts filed earlier this month, turnover at Ecotricity Group climbed to £175.7m in the year to April 30 2018, up from £126.5m the year before.

Strong performance in the company's electricity and supply business as well as its wind portfolio were identified by directors as being behind the rise in turnover, which took place even though customer numbers fell.

This means that Ecotricity's profits were up in 2018 by 74.1%, having fallen by 32.5% the year before.

Ecotricity, which has its headquarters in Stroud, made redundancies in June last year - roughly two months after the timeframe of the recently filed accounts.

At the time owner Dale Vince told staff by email that the company needed to restructure to "make us more efficient and better able to do things we want to do in future."

The accounts for 2018 show that Ecotricity employed 781 members of staff before the redundancies.

Looking ahead, directors believe 2019 will be another year of growth for the business.

But they picked out "steep inclines" in the price of wholesale gas and power prices as well as the introduction of energy price caps as key challenges facing energy suppliers.