Fridge that runs without electricity pioneered by Welsh start-up

In Tywyn, a town nestled on the wave-beaten Welsh coast at the foot of the Snowdonian mountains, a start-up is trying to recreate a broiling equatorial climate. Six heating chambers sit humming alongside a 3D-printer and print runs of special baskets for vaccines. A man-sized box bound for India hulks in the corner - stamped with a picture of a cow, so locals who respect the creature will not be tempted to tamper with it.

This is the laboratory at Sure Chill, which has made a fridge that can run for more than 35 days without electricity. Its first aim is to protect vaccines from damage caused by patchy refrigeration, as the delicate medicines make their way from factories to remote medical outposts.

"Billions of dollars are spent every year on vaccines for the developing world," says Peter Saunders, Sure Chill's chairman and its biggest investor, having injected £2.5m into the company. "But many of those vaccines are wasted because they're not kept at a suitable temperature."

The biggest problem is not heat but freezing, with studies indicating that a significant proportion of vaccines are exposed to destructive sub-zero temperatures from ice packs and poorly controlled cooling.

Mr Saunders observes that the outbreak of the Ebola virus in west Africa has highlighted the urgency of improving public health infrastructure worldwide. On the day he met the Financial Times, he was buzzing with excitement from a recent meeting with Bill Gates, whose charitable foundation has given more than $1m to Sure Chill to help it develop its coolers. "Very businesslike, very focused," is how Mr Saunders describes the philanthropist.

Sure Chill made more than 1,000 fridges last year and has delivered devices to customers in 45 countries, including Unicef, the UN's child welfare arm. Its standard fridges run for about 10 days and it is in the final stages of getting World Health Organisation approval for its longest lasting cooler. But the company is also targeting consumer devices, including air conditioners and drink fridges, like the one filled with Pepsi standing in the company's reception.

The patented technology is the brainchild of Ian Tansley, a product designer and renewable energy engineer who came up with the idea while striding around a frozen lake in north Wales. As he described to a friend how fish could swim happily under a layer of ice, he realised the unique feature of water that makes this possible - being densest at 4C - could be used to make a new kind of cooler.

"I was trying to explain to him, if heat rises, why is the top of the lake frozen?" Mr Tansley says. "Only the heaviest water can fall to the bottom: anything that isn't four degrees wants to rise, because everything else is lighter."

Mr Tansley had met Mr Saunders in 2005 and the pair decided to focus exclusively on the new technology five years ago.

Sure Chill fridges comprise a water-filled chamber with a block of ice at the top, which can be made with a sporadic power supply or a solar panel. As lighter water comes into contact with the ice, it cools and sinks again, allowing the system to maintain a steady temperature.

"The ice is as energy-dense as a car battery," Mr Tansley explains. "But here's a battery you can charge and discharge as many times as you like: it's never going to wear out."

A Sure Chill fridge has two big advantages over a conventional appliance, which pumps fluid through a circuit of pipes and sucks out heat as the substance changes back and forth between a liquid and a gas.

For one, it provides more stable temperatures. "A conventional fridge works in short bursts. It sees a high temperature, and says, 'I have to pull the temperature down and create some cold'," Mr Tansley explains. "It's constantly doing this zigzag as the thermostat kicks in and out."

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Second, Sure Chill fridges are more energy efficient because they can be drip-fed electricity. Unlike a standard fridge, which needs a constant supply, Sure Chill devices "top up" the ice block by refreezing the water using electricity if and when it is available - or cheapest. They could avoid drawing down electricity at peak times, Mr Tansley notes, helping policy makers design "smart grids" and incorporate renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power into national networks.

The system has its drawbacks: Sure Chill fridges are about twice as heavy as normal ones when filled with water, which must be clean of impurities to work properly. They currently cost more than $2,000 but the company says prices will fall as volumes grow.

Sure Chill made £1.7m in revenues in the year to March 2014 and is projecting that it will break even this year. The company has signed a licensing deal with Godrej, which has 15 per cent of India's white goods market and is expected to start manufacturing from Sure Chill's designs in a few months. Godrej sees potential to sell vaccine fridges to the government and perhaps wine coolers to the country's emerging middle class.

Remote Tywyn seems like an unlikely place for cutting edge innovation but Mr Saunders is committed to the area. He made his name building successful food companies in Wales, including swooping in to buy back Halo Foods when Nestle threatened to close it after acquiring Rowntree, its parent company.

"There's an issue with distance and perceived isolation - but on the plus side you can invest in people, because if they come here, they tend to stay and help you build a stronger business," Mr Saunders says.

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