Gyre Energy wins funding for larger cold chain rollout

Gyre Energy has secured more than USD $1.3 million in investment and grant funding to support its expansion into larger customer deployments.

The Oxford-founded cooling technology company said the money has helped fund work at large-scale cold chain sites, including a deployment with a global logistics operator that moves and stores temperature-sensitive goods.

The project centres on a chamber within a 140,000 sq ft cold chain operation. Performance will be measured against an IPMVP baseline, a common framework for assessing energy savings.

Gyre said its system uses artificial intelligence to analyse site behaviour, forecast cooling demand and adjust operations to reduce electricity use while keeping temperatures stable. The platform also uses thermal energy storage to shift cooling activity to periods when electricity is cheaper, then release that stored cooling during peak pricing periods.

The customer has not been named. Gyre described the installation as its largest deployment to date and its first with a global logistics operator.

Cooling demand

Gyre is entering the market as cooling loads rise across logistics, buildings and digital infrastructure. Higher temperatures have added pressure to cold chains and electricity grids, while operators face rising energy bills from refrigeration and air conditioning systems.

The International Energy Agency has warned that cooling demand is straining grids around the world. It has also forecast that global electricity demand will grow about 50% faster over the second half of the decade than in the previous ten years, with heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, data centres and electrification among the main drivers.

For operators of refrigerated warehouses and food logistics sites, electricity is often one of the biggest operating costs. Cooling equipment can also be difficult to upgrade quickly, increasing interest in software and storage systems that can improve performance without replacing entire installations.

Gyre said it had already shown commercial results in a UK chilled and frozen distribution business with a nationwide depot network. In a previously published deployment at a 2,900 sq ft frozen cold storage site, the company said it cut electricity costs by 38% and daily energy consumption by 35%, with a payback period of less than 1.5 years.

The latest project marks a step up in scale. Moving from a smaller warehouse environment to a chamber within a 140,000 sq ft operation gives the company a test case in a more complex site, where refrigeration demand, asset utilisation and energy costs are likely to vary more sharply over the course of the day.

Investor backing

The pre-seed round was led by Speedinvest, with participation from Rule 30 and Plug and Play. Gyre said the mix of equity investment and grant funding would support commercial growth as it targets larger sites in cold storage, food logistics and industrial cooling.

The business was founded by Dougald Coulson, Chief Executive Officer; Michael McKenna, Chief Technology Officer; and Tom Gibson, Chief Operating Officer. The founders are Oxford MBAs with backgrounds spanning machine learning, energy systems and energy technology commercialisation.

Gyre said its systems are already deployed in the UK, Africa and the Caribbean, and that it is expanding in the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe. It also sees scope to apply its technology in data centres, where operators are under pressure to manage energy use and heat loads as demand for computing rises.

Coulson framed the company's pitch around the cost of cooling and the potential to use existing systems more flexibly.

"Cooling already accounts for around a fifth of global electricity demand, and it's rapidly growing. For the operators we work with, energy is one of their largest costs and cooling is the part they've had the least control over. What's really resonating with our customers is that the same infrastructure that has historically been a cost line can become an energy asset. Working with one of the world's largest logistics operators gives us the opportunity to prove that approach in one of the most demanding cold chain environments in the world," said Dougald Coulson, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Gyre Energy.

Speedinvest said Gyre's progress since its initial investment had helped move the business from a first commercial deployment to work with a much larger logistics customer.

"Cooling is one of the most fundamental and overlooked problems in the energy transition, and Gyre is tackling it head on. This is AI applied to the real world, delivering real outcomes in the shape of lower energy consumption and more resilient supply chains. In the twelve months since we invested, Dougald, Tom, Mike and the team have executed exceptionally, moving from proven first commercial deployment to working with one of the world's most sophisticated cold chain operators. Gyre is building a core layer of the energy stack of the future, and we're delighted to be on this journey with a team that is global by nature and unbounded in its ambition," said Alex Davis, Investor, Speedinvest.