After four years of success, thanks to its incredible team of employees and support from its partners and investors, NanoSUN celebrates its 4th birthday this year. As the team prepares for a promising future of hydrogen and many more successful years ahead, NanoSUN looks back at its achievements over the past few years.
In 2017, two ex-Linde colleagues, Graham Hodgson and Noel Leeson, set out to provide hydrogen users with convenient and low cost hydrogen refuelling solutions within the transportation sector. Starting out in Hodgson’s home office in Lancaster, a small team of less than 5 employees began a journey to develop innovative refuelling technology that would facilitate the adoption of hydrogen as a leading energy vector of the future.
Now, just four years later, NanoSUN is a thriving start-up business that has more than tripled the size of its team, with over 40 employees to date. Consisting of a range of passionate professionals from scientific experts and engineering specialists to enthusiastic graduates, the fast-growing team was extremely pleased to move into a new office this summer. Fully furnished with sustainable furniture to reduce the impact on the local environment, the new premises has the ability to house over 100 employees, enabling the continued expansion of the company as it continues to recruit. Providing much needed exciting careers within the engineering industry and the low-carbon hydrogen sector.
In 2019, the Transportation and Mobility Sectors saw NanoSUN win the New Energy Challenge, whereby they were awarded vital funding from Shell. This allowed NanoSUN to begin concentrating its efforts on its value proposition to bridge the gap between hydrogen production and end users of hydrogen powered vehicle fleets. From then on, the team’s primary focus has been to develop its Pioneer Hydrogen Refuelling Station from initial concept discovery through to the manufacturing of the mobile refuelling unit.
Over the last six months, we have seen the results of the team’s dedication and hard work. NanoSUN has completed the manufacture and commissioning of its first Pioneer prototype and has introduced the state-of-the-art system to the market, where key industry figures are quickly seeing the Pioneer's potential to deliver fast hydrogen refuelling at a low-cost. Due to the positive reaction from the industry, NanoSUN are already starting to see the benefits of the Pioneer solution in accelerating the energy transition within the transport sector, particularly heavy-duty vehicles, having established future collaborations with significant players.
This year alone, the business has established a collaboration with Octopus Hydrogen, a part of the Octopus Energy Group, to provide mobile hydrogen refuelling for the automotive industry across the UK and have advanced into the European market having formed a partnership with Westfalen AG to carry out a number of Pioneer demonstration deployments across Germany; supplying hydrogen refuelling to a range of hydrogen powered vehicle fleets, from warehouse-based material handling vehicles through to road going municipal trucks. The start-up has also most recently announced the Pioneer’s movement into the Aviation Sector, having been selected by EMEC to provide the hydrogen refuelling software for the HyFlyer II Project.
Now, moving forward, NanoSUN looks to scale up manufacturing in response to the growing hydrogen demand from hydrogen users. Having already sold a considerable amount of Pioneer HRS production capacity for 2022, the team is thoroughly focused on follow through and execution.
Noel Leeson, NanoSUN Founder and Executive Director, commented “Graham and I knew that we were onto something important when we founded NanoSUN. Over the last four years, more and more people have agreed. Investors entrusted us with their money, major corporations such as Shell and OMV validated our thinking, UK government and the EU provided significant grant funding and customers are now lining up to buy Pioneers. Most importantly we have been joined on the journey by an incredible group of people who bring their drive and passion to NanoSUN every day of the week. I can honestly say that the NanoSUN years have been the most exciting, enjoyable and downright fun period of my career so far and I’m confident that the next four years will be even more rewarding for all those associated with NanoSUN!”
Last weekend, the team gathered at the Hodgson's family home to celebrate NanoSUN's incorporation on 10th September 2017, where founder Graham Hodgson gave a speech on the outstanding work efforts carried out by all employees. All in all, life hasn’t been boring for this fast-growing start-up. Despite the worst global pandemic in a century, the NanoSUN team has charged ahead, collectively working together to achieve their objective to produce the innovative Pioneer product, offering a low-cost path to delivery of transportation grade fuel to the point of use.
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