Tracking NanoSUN's EIC Accelerator Hydrogen Refueller: Dissolved

NanoSUN Limited, a Lancaster company founded in 2017 by two industrial gas veterans, set out to make hydrogen refuelling cheap enough for truck and bus fleets by putting a whole filling station into a shipping container. In the European Innovation Council's October 2020 round it was one of the winners of the EIC Accelerator pilot, grant only, for a project called MOBHYLE. The EU contribution was €2,478,332.50 towards a total cost of €3,547,975, according to CORDIS. NanoSUN is the only company listed for the project.

The company did build and sell its Pioneer refuellers. It also lost money on them. On 6 February 2024, almost three months before MOBHYLE was due to end, NanoSUN went into administration and its business was sold the same day to a company owned by its largest investor, according to the administrators' statement of proposals and a notice in The London Gazette. NanoSUN Limited was dissolved on 10 May 2026, according to Companies House.

How NanoSUN Ended

The administrators, Patrick Lannagan and Conrad Pearson of Mazars, were appointed on 6 February 2024. Their proposals say a rescue of the company "in its existing form" was impossible because "significant funding was required to further develop the Pioneer units" and give the market time to mature. The business and certain assets were sold that day to Swift Hydrogen Limited, a company incorporated twelve days earlier and wholly owned by a nominee of HydrogenOne Capital Growth, NanoSUN's lead investor. The administrators classed it as a connected party: Richard Hulf, a NanoSUN director, was a director of the buyer, and the chief executive, Neil Tierney, had a senior role there. The price was £600,000 up front plus 20% of the proceeds from reselling four unfinished Pioneer units, which the administrators first estimated at £300,000. All 32 remaining employees moved to the buyer.

The extra money never came. Two of the units sat at a supplier that NanoSUN owed "a significant amount" and would not release them; Swift Hydrogen sold everything at that site to the supplier for £1. The other two units fetched £100,000, a price that the administrators' final report says reflected "issues with the unit design" and the lack of warranties, so the estate received £20,000.

Innovate UK Loans, which had lent £975,000 against a debenture, recovered £316,340.17. Unsecured creditors proved claims of £6,558,972.99 and were paid a dividend of 1.33 pence in the pound, £82,749.91 in total, on 15 January 2026, according to the final report and a Gazette notice of the dividend. The administrators found "no matters that justified further investigation". The company moved from administration to dissolution, and the register shows it dissolved on 10 May 2026.

Swift Hydrogen did not carry the business far. Its own micro-entity accounts report an average of 7 employees in 2024 and none in 2025, with net liabilities of £1,149,713 at the end of 2025. Both HydrogenOne partners left its board in 2025, according to Companies House. HydrogenOne said in May 2024 that it held Swift "at nominal value pending further corporate developments", according to QuotedData. NanoSUN's website, nanosun.co.uk, did not load in October 2026. No public statement on what became of the Pioneer product line after 2024 could be found.

The Technology: A Filling Station Without a Compressor

A conventional hydrogen station compresses gas on site to the pressure a vehicle tank needs, which takes heavy machinery and an industrial power supply. NanoSUN's Pioneer did away with both. Hydrogen was loaded into high-pressure storage in a 20-foot or 40-foot shipping container at a production site, the container was trucked to the customer, and vehicles were filled by "cascade" dispensing, drawing gas from storage banks at successively higher pressures. The MOBHYLE final report says the design "removes all rotating machines, pumps, compressors" and takes 30 minutes to start up. NanoSUN claimed it cost half as much as alternatives; no independent comparison of that claim was found. CORDIS lists two European patent applications from 2022 on gas transfer and fuelling methods, according to the project's results page.

What MOBHYLE Promised, and What the Record Shows

MOBHYLE ran from 1 April 2021 to 30 April 2024 under the Horizon 2020 SME instrument. Its objective was to fund "field trials across Europe, with potential customers", on the case that the market was worth "~€2.3 billion of refuelling equipment for every 1% of heavy-duty vehicles that switch to hydrogen fuel" and that NanoSUN's addressable market would reach €140 million a year by 2025. The final report says the grant built "the first Pioneer stations and a loading station" and ran three trials: two with Westfalen in Germany, refuelling buses at 300 and 400 bar, and one with the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in the UK, refuelling an aircraft. The trials exposed weaknesses "in mechanical robustness and control logic", and NanoSUN said it began developing a next-generation product.

The customer side is confirmed by other sources. Octopus Hydrogen ordered "an initial fleet" of Pioneers in June 2021, according to Hydrogen Ireland. In November 2022 NanoSUN announced its first delivery, a unit named Henry Cavendish for Octopus Hydrogen, with Motive Fuels, EMEC and Westfalen also named as customers, according to Fuel Oil News. The administrators put the first ten orders at £400,000 a unit, four for Octopus, four for Westfalen and one each for Motive Fuels and EMEC, and say Westfalen ordered four more in 2023. In November 2023 AFC Energy bought "two x 350bar 420kg NanoSun Pioneer Mobile Hydrogen Refueling Stations" from Octopus Hydrogen, according to its stock exchange announcement.

1. Build the first Pioneer stations and a loading stationDeliveredUnits delivered from November 2022 to Octopus Hydrogen and others; two later resold to AFC Energy.
2. Field trials with customers across EuropePartly deliveredThree trials in Germany and the UK, per the CORDIS report; no independent trial results published.
3. Design evolution and next-generation productNot deliveredNever launched; the administrators cite design issues in the last units.
4. Low cost and commercial roll-outNot deliveredThe administrators say the production unit proved more difficult to build than expected; administration in February 2024.

The final CORDIS report covers the period to 30 April 2024 and says Pioneer stations "have been delivered since early 2023" and that NanoSUN "continues to receive high levels of customer enquiries". It does not mention that the company had been in administration since 6 February 2024. How much of the €2.48 million was paid out, and whether any was recovered, is not public; the creditor schedule in the administrators' proposals does not name the European Commission or any EU agency.

The Money

NanoSUN raised about £2 million of equity in its first rounds and £12 million in a Series A, according to the administrators. Of the Series A, HydrogenOne Capital Growth put in £9.05 million, alongside the German gas group Westfalen, according to H2 Bulletin and TheBusinessDesk, both from 7 December 2021. The company was not backed by the EIC Fund: its award was grant only, and it does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which had 319 entries across 16 pages when checked for this article.

The 2022 accounts, the last NanoSUN filed, show the money draining: cash fell from £11,679,314 to £835,110 in a year, stock rose to £5,975,734 and net assets fell to £7,050,072. The average workforce nearly doubled, from 34 to 66. The administrators blame the P145, the production version of the Pioneer, which "proved more difficult to build than expected", with supply chain problems after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and "significant technical and delivery problems at two critical suppliers". A planned Series B of about £20 million was brought forward to 2023 but never closed. HydrogenOne put £1.5 million into a convertible loan, an application for UK export finance failed, and in the third quarter of 2023 "a number of customers declined to accept delivery of completed Pioneer units" while threatening legal action. By 28 November 2023 the board concluded the company was insolvent on a cash-flow basis.

Why Europe Should Care

The idea behind Pioneer sits squarely in EU policy. The Commission's hydrogen strategy of July 2020, adopted three months before NanoSUN's cut-off, set out 20 actions to build a hydrogen economy, and the REPowerEU plan of 2022 aimed at 10 million tonnes of domestic production by 2030. The Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, applicable since 13 April 2024, requires publicly accessible hydrogen stations at most 200 km apart on the trans-European transport network. Mobile refuellers are one way to serve early fleets before fixed stations pay off. NanoSUN's history shows the other side: its customers were early hydrogen fleets themselves, and when demand for hydrogen vehicles slowed in 2023 a small equipment maker had no buffer.

The Verdict

NanoSUN's former directors, Swift Hydrogen and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, filings and published statements, linked throughout.