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Sunswap's solar and battery-powered transport refrigeration units keep food, medicine and vaccines cold whilst on the road. With the working prototype built and two UK government funded projects underway, Sunswap are accelerating towards deploying their first unit on the road in Autumn 2021.
Sunswap aims to decarbonise the cold chain with zero-emission Transport Refrigeration Units (TRUs).
Diesel-powered TRUs are expensive to operate and will become even more costly in 2022 when cheap red diesel is banned, increasing costs by 47p per litre of diesel. They are also highly polluting - we calculate replacing a diesel TRU with a Sunswap TRU could be the equivalent of removing 31 cars from the road.
Sunswap estimate there are currently 5.6m TRUs on the road globally. We expect this to rise to 8m units, with a market worth £13.4bn by 2030. We believe electric TRU sales will follow the electric vehicle adoption curve with a 60% year-on-year growth.
Sunswap's patent-pending technology provides operators with a zero-emission alternative to their existing diesel TRUs. A working prototype has successfully proven capability to meet temperature requirements of -22°C. We're collaborating with six major UK supermarkets on product development, with aims to secure sales with them in 2021.
Sunswap is moving quickly and achieved key milestones in 2020:
- March: investment from Sustainable Ventures
- June: filed patent application
- August: awarded £217,000 in equity-free government funding, partnering with Imperial College London and Cenex
- September: prototype testing complete
We're raising to grow the team, build the next generation product and secure sales by the end of 2021.