Solar truck fridges, microfibre filters and lithium membranes: October's climate money

Filings show £17.8m for Sunswap, £3.8m for Evove and £3.5m for Matter; 36 climate companies filed £176.9m of new funding in October.

By Bradshaw

11 Nov 2026

Data to 9 Nov 2026

The refrigeration unit on the front of a food trailer usually burns diesel. Sunswap, in Leatherhead, Surrey, makes one that does not: Endurance, a battery and solar-powered transport refrigeration unit. Its customer announcements name Tesco, Cranswick and DFDS, and the company says Endurance cuts operating costs by up to 81%.

The company opened four new markets in the first half of 2026: France, Spain, Australia and Chile. By its own account, a Wickham Freight trailer ran 1,671km from Sydney to Brisbane and back on 28% of its battery, and a unit in France held -20°C for 21 hours straight on frozen routes for Carrefour. Sunswap says its units have now covered 6.3 million kilometres across all fleets. Michael Lowe, the co-founder and chief executive, has a new Technology Centre to build them in, four times the size of the previous facility. A filing in October shows £17.8m of new shares for Sunswap.

Sunswap is one of three climate companies in this piece, and none of them builds a wind farm or a solar park. Each makes equipment that takes one dirty step out of an industry that already exists.

From a turkey farm to textile mills

Inheriting Earth, which trades as Matter, began in a converted unit on a turkey farm. Adam Root, an engineer, founded it in 2018 with a £250 Prince's Trust grant and an idea developed around a family dining room table. Its product, Regen, is a self-cleaning filtration system that captures microplastic fibres during textile production, before they reach a river.

Matter now works from Avon Trading Estate in St Philip's, Bristol. It signed a commercial contract with Paradise Textiles in 2024, and it supplies B/S/H for home washing machines. Inter IKEA Group is among its backers, and Matter was an Earthshot Prize finalist in 2025. The company says it aims to keep 15,000 tonnes of microfibre out of the oceans by 2030 and to install systems at over 400 factories by 2030. Matter raised £3.5m in October.

Membranes for lithium

Evove, in Widnes, makes membranes, the filters used to separate one thing from another in water. Its Enhance products improve existing membranes with coatings, inserts and spacers, many of them 3D-printed to a customer's needs. Its own design, Separonics, is built around membranes the company describes as “perfectly uniform in pore size and distribution”. Chris Wyres is the chief executive.

One use is lithium. Evove, Kurita and Northern Lithium plan modular direct lithium extraction plants built around Evove's membranes. Under the plan, Kurita will engineer and manufacture the plants, and the brine, once its lithium is removed, will be injected back into the aquifer below ground. Northern Lithium aims to begin commercial production in 2027 at sites in County Durham, starting at 500 tonnes per year. A filing in October shows £3.8m of new shares for Evove.

In October, 36 companies that Bradshaw labels as climate, energy and environment filed priced share issues worth £176.9m, among 617 across the UK worth £1.65bn. Other filings in the sector are larger than these three and are still being checked. Across the UK, 345 of the 617 have no sector label yet, so the climate count covers labelled companies only. The sector tables are on the Bradshaw data page.

Sources

Learn more at bradshawdata.com. Corrections are listed with their dates.