Combined investment from a private equity group and the government’s Heat Pump Ready incentive will be used to scale up production to meet European demand for integrated HVAC systems
UK-based modular heat pump manufacturer Ventive has received a £2.5m investment funding package to ramp up its production capabilities. The manufacturer, which has been handmaking small batches of its heat pumps, expects to begin producing thousands of systems a year from 2023 onwards using the money.
The majority of these funds will be provided via a £1.5m grant from the government’s Heat Pump Ready Programme that was previously announced last month.
However, additional funding will be provided as part of an investment by the private equity group EMV Capital, which will take a 16 per cent share of the company. EMV Capital has made several investments based around new building systems and technology focused on efficiency.
Ventive said the group’s investment will help it to begin producing heat pumps at mass scale that will be built to an annual production capacity of 10,000 systems by the end of 2023. This capacity will help meet growing demand across Europe for its products, with trials already underway in markets such as Italy, Germany and France.
The manufacturer claimed that in Ireland alone, it was presently seeing demand for 5,000 of its heat pumps each year.
Ventive’s domestic heat pumps are designed to offer integrated ventilation , heating and hot water functions with the capability for free summer cooling also. The systems are provided pre-plumbed and pre-configured to be able to be installed on-site with a simplified process. Another design feature is the capability to provide monitoring and energy storage functions, the manufacturer added.
Tom Lipinksi, founder and technical director with Ventive, said that future heat pump systems will be required to function not only as heat generation devices, but also as solutions that can more more closely integrate buildings with a renewable energy grid.
He said: “Ventive has ambitions to provide not just the healthy, comfortable and safe indoor environment (intelligently and at a reasonable cost), but also manage the energy demand on aggregated scale. The UK production facility enabled by this funding is the first sizeable step in this direction and I am hugely excited by the opportunities it opens up.”
EMV Capital’s recent investment in heat pump manufacture builds on a series of commitments to help fund development of several business technologies.
This includes taking a stake in robotic solutions developer Q-Bot that is working to automate the process for installing underfloor insulation in the UK and European markets. The private equity group has also invested in Israel-based Pointgrab that is focused on AI sensor technology that can help automate and improve the energy management of buildings.