Dearman, the clean cold and power technology company, has announced that Park Vale Capital has committed to invest £16 million in the business.

This brings the total funds raised by Dearman during 2015 to £19.5 million (excluding grant funding), and will allow the company to bring the first application of its technology to market. It will also enable it to establish initial UK-based manufacturing activity and to achieve widespread international commercial deployment, while continuing to invest in R&D and demonstration of its core technology and subsequent applications.

Park Vale is a global investor with an established presence in Europe, the USA and Asia, along with expertise in the bio-medical, cyber technology and real estate sectors. It will work in partnership with Dearman, helping it to establish new markets for its technology and to identify opportunities for growth and realise them.

Managing director of Park Vale, Katherine Priestley, said: “Dearman is an extremely exciting company that is developing unique technology to address a clear global need - clean cold. Although the applications of Dearman technology will bring demonstrable environmental benefits, it is the fact that they are also commercially attractive and even operationally superior that makes the company so promising.”

Dearman chief executive, Toby Peters, said: “To have partnership of this scale, from a company as respected as Park Vale, is a recognition of the potential of our technology, the quality of our team and the rapid progress we have made to date. We have a vision to utilise innovative clean cold and power technology to address global environmental challenges, while delivering economic returns for our shareholders and growth in the communities where we operate. With the support of all our investors I am confident that we can achieve and even exceed that goal.”

The latest round of investment includes continued backing from a broad range of investors including Transmark NV, which has provided substantial investment to date and continues to be actively involved in the future of the business.

Dearman is developing a broad portfolio of clean cold and power technologies, all of which harness the unique attributes of the liquid air-powered Dearman engine.

The first application of Dearman technology is a zero-emission transport refrigeration unit, which offers a commercially attractive and operationally superior alternative to the polluting diesel powered units that keep refrigerated cargo cool on the road today. There is a substantial and rapidly growing addressable market for this technology and Dearman aims to achieve significant penetration in a number of countries, enabling it to maximise both the environmental and economic impact of its technology.

Commercial trials of the Dearman zero-emission transport refrigeration system are due to begin in early 2016, with further international trials to follow later in the year.

Subsequent applications of Dearman technology, already under development, include an auxiliary cold and power unit for buses and HGVs, a back up cold and power system for the built environment and a waste-heat hybrid drive system for trucks and buses.