Meet Zinc’s growing environment portfolio
Zinc’s Environment Investment team backs early stage ventures building environmentally positive mitigation and adaptation solutions that have the potential to deliver both financial returns and measurable impact at scale. By partnering with these initiatives, we aim to accelerate the global transition to a sustainable, nature-positive future, where human activity is in harmony with the planet’s health, while creating lasting value for investors.
We look for technologies and business model innovations that don’t just make incremental progress, but have the potential to transform entire industries. Our thriving portfolio of exciting environment investments is continuing to expand. Spanning hardware, SaaS, deep tech, novel scientific innovation, process technologies and marketplaces, each company is uniquely positioned to transform entire industries at scale.
Recent additions to our portfolio include groundbreaking electrolyser technology, innovative battery recycling methods, next-generation bioreactors, precision robotics for viticulture, bio-based alternatives to petrochemicals, and software platforms tackling complex B2B challenges, to name a few.
As we head into 2025, here’s a look at some of the early stage environment ventures Zinc has backed to date, and why we believe they each have what it takes to drive significant environmental impact while delivering substantial commercial success:
Cellmine
Preventing battery waste from inundating landfills and reducing industry’s reliance on mined metals.
▶ CellMine has developed a truly revolutionary lithium-ion battery recycling process that reduces capital costs, operational costs and environmental impact. Their unique approach involves a patent-pending process that not only recycles batteries but also rejuvenates and enhances the cathode materials. Its potential is transformational, not incremental. Their recent pre-seed fundraise will now enable them to scale-up their outputs and break ground on a new pilot plant.
Material Index
On a mission to enable largescale material reuse in the construction industry.
▶ Material Index’s co-founders Morgan (an architect with experience at Goldman Sachs-acquired low-carbon startup TopHat) and Rob (a Chartered Engineer and property developer) are perfectly positioned to achieve their ambitious mission to transform an entire sector. They recently closed a substantial pre-seed round, are operational at over 50 construction sites in the UK, and have blue-chip clients including British Land, The Crown Estate and HS2.
Clyde Hydrogen
On a mission to redefine the green hydrogen sector with a new category of electrolyser.
▶ Clyde’s decoupled electrolysis process offers the potential for unprecedented improvements in safety, high pressure production, scaling and cost for green hydrogen production. They have recently announced their successful production of hydrogen at pressures exceeding 100 bar using its scaled-up catalytic hydrogen generator, and have recruited an experienced CEO to the team. James Peck joins from a high-growth VC backed hydrogen venture, bringing deep domain and commercial experience.
Cordon Technologies
Enabling cost effective, environmentally sensitive vineyard automation.
▶ In just over a year, the Cordon team has gone from concept to in-field deployment of their AI powered high precision spraying technology, won significant grants and closed their pre-seed funding round. With a founding team that combines the right mix of skills (practical experience in running a vineyard, agile product development and PhDs in exactly the right technologies) they are well on track to achieve their mission to reduce pesticide use for farmers by 50%.
Carbon Two
Enabling the production of sustainable and clean bio-based chemicals.
▶ Carbon Two is led by a compelling founding team: Max, with deep expertise in biotechnology, and Ryan, a chemical engineer with corporate experience. The opportunity in their initial target market for bio-chemicals – cosmetics – is substantial, and they have been joined by a strategic chair from the sector. Carbon Two has recently achieved a groundbreaking technology milestone, and secured grant funding from UKRI.
Ampoxe
Transforming energy storage for a cleaner, greener world.
▶ Ampoxe are innovating at the intersection of materials innovation and advanced manufacturing to tackle a complex technical problem – solid state batteries. Founders Amponsah and Dee are the ideal duo to build this solution and take it to market. Amponsah brings 15 years of experience in battery science while Dee has 15 years as a commercial leader. Ampoxe has recently filed its second patent, received funding from Zinc, and obtained a grant to conduct proof-of-concept work with the Royce Institute.
NUNA Studio
Building products to help property owners reintroduce nature into urban environments.
▶ NUNA is a nature-tech start-up addressing the lack of biodiversity in today’s urban environments. The team has built partnerships with world-leading research institutions, property developers and manufacturing firms to get their first product, the NUNA Lattice, into proof of concept deployments with clients including the Grosvenor Estate.
RideTandem
Tackling transport poverty to enable sustainable commuting for all.
▶ RideTandem’s mobility-as-a-service platform has unlocked thousands of otherwise inaccessible jobs for employees at the likes of Royal Mail, Lidl, DPD and Next. They have enabled carbon reductions of over 528 megatonnes and the cumulative wages their platform has enabled is upwards of £88m. They have recently launched into European markets, and been recognised in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 as the 2nd fastest growing cleantech company in the UK.
Granyt
Accelerating the green energy transition with simple and affordable climate finance.
▶ Granyt’s mission is to prevent 30 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the next 10 years. Founders Caroline and Bernard have built an end-to-end point of purchase finance platform that automates applications for solar installation financing to quotation in just two hours. They have secured both equity funding and lending capital, and have built an impressive team with decades of highly relevant expertise.
Unibloom
Predictive scenario simulation to accelerate climate action for corporates.
▶ This year, the Unibloom team has raised a £650,000 pre-seed round, secured partnerships with Unilever and Cloetta, and signed contracts with enterprise customers including Nasdaq-listed Scandi Standard, Redgate, GoodPop, and the Watch & Jewellery Initiative. With Anna’s 25 years of experience leading business expansion and operations at Unilever, and Vineet’s decade of software engineering experience at Bloomberg, as a duo they are incredibly well-placed to build the team and technology to tackle a huge and complex challenge.
Iterum
On a mission to bring circular disruption to the $1 trillion global home appliance market.
▶ Iterum’s starting point is the £1.5 billion market of large property managers. Their Appliance-as-a-Service platform is reducing appliance access and management costs by 20-30%, lowering both embodied and operational CO2 emissions, minimising tenant downtime and easing workload for property managers. The company has recently raised £580,000 in external capital to support its continued growth and substantial commercial contracts have been signed with scaled institutional real estate investors.
Sterling Bio Machines
Building novel bioreactor systems to unlock the huge potential of synthetic biology and biomanufacturing.
▶ Sterling Bio Machines was founded by powerhouse duo Akshaya (an engineer with experience in bioproduction systems) and Steve (a 3x exited technology founder). They are focussed on serving the burgeoning cell and gene therapy market. In the past year, they made significant technological advances, accelerating from TRL1-5. They have also developed a proprietary control system to optimise the performance of their bioreactors, been awarded significant Innovate UK funding, and won a place on the Deeptech Labs innovation programme.
Okhtapus
On a mission to supercharge thousands of ocean changemakers to rapidly scale, finance and replicate ocean innovations.
▶ The Okhtapus platform is connecting trusted ocean innovators and local enablers to funders to launch and scale impactful ocean resilience projects across the globe. Founders Mehrnaz and Stewart make a formidable team, with deep expertise and networks in the space. They have recently joined an accelerator programme and have kicked off a strategic partnership with the Port Authority in Barcelona.
DeepRoots
Helping farmers restore ecosystems, increase biodiversity, and boost profitability.
▶ DeepRoots’ technology is accelerating the adoption of agroforestry. In recent months, the team has launched two significant projects: a full agroforestry design and implementation with a well-known premium poultry farm and a feasibility study for a major racecourse. They have also engaged with a major UK supermarket and an EU-wide agroforestry project, accelerating their mission to transform our food systems with resilient, tree-based farming.
Taza Farms
Advancing hydroponic and controlled environment agriculture technologies in arid regions.
▶ Taza Farms is building automated hydroponic fodder growing systems for cattle farmers in arid and climate-stressed regions. Their mission is to positively impact communities economically and ecologically, making substantial progress in water conservation and sustainable farming. Founders Nas and Ahmed bring technical expertise developing hydroponic systems, robust networks and are advancing several key partnerships and pilot opportunities that will help bring their technology rapidly towards commercial deployment.
You can learn more about Zinc’s Science-for-Impact vision for a healthy planet, our investment thesis, and what we look for in world-class founders here.
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Building and commercialising science-for-impact: If you would like to follow in the footsteps of our portfolio founders to build the next world-changing innovation in the environment, apply for pre-seed investment and venture building support from Zinc today: https://www.zinc.vc/.
Investors & Partners: For an introduction to any of these exciting teams, please reach out to Alex Cheswick: alex@zinc.vc.
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Featured Resources
Zinc Impact Report 2024
Zinc’s mission is to make the UK the best place to successfully start a venture which can have a massive impact on the health of people and the planet.
Increasingly, we are building deeper science ventures that serve global, industrial customers in environment and health, giving access to impact at a global scale.
Our 2024 Impact Report explores the challenges that need to be tackled to empower and enable talented founders from around the world to solve critical health and environmental challenges at scale, from here in the UK.
This report showcases success stories from the Zinc portfolio, and highlights how Zinc – and our growing community of hundreds of Founders, Fellows, Coaches, Partners and Funders – are working together to build a world-leading “Science-for-Impact” ecosystem for inception stage ventures in health and environment.
Impact Report 2023
We started Zinc with the hypothesis that missions are an effective way to attract highly ambitious, talented and experienced groups of innovators, who might not recognise themselves as “classic entrepreneurs” but are ready and able to start a new commercial and successful venture to tackle some of our most pressing societal issues.
The world has overcome the sorts of challenges we face today when it has adopted a mission-based approach to the biggest problems and brought together world-class talent to invent and innovate, e.g: NASA and landing a man on the moon, the LSE blueprinting the British welfare state, or the Gates Foundation aiming to eradicate diseases.
On this basis and assumption, we designed Zinc as a new mission-based Venture Builder — a place where global talent, ‘impact makers’, can join to experiment and develop new solutions to our most pressing societal issues.
