Zikodrive is delighted to announce the approval of a new Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Sheffield, starting in late 2026, marking an exciting new chapter in our ongoing commitment to innovation in motor controller design. This partnership will focus on researching and developing improved efficiency techniques for motor control and represents the first such arrangement that Zikodrive has undertaken.
What is a Knowledge Transfer Partnership?
For those unfamiliar with the scheme, a Knowledge Transfer Partnership is a UK government-backed initiative, delivered through Innovate UK, that connects businesses with academic institutions to work on a specific, strategically important project. The partnership embeds a talented graduate — known as the KTP Associate — within the business, supported by academic supervisors from the university and specialists from the company, to transfer knowledge, skills, and technology in both directions. It's a proven model that has helped hundreds of UK manufacturers unlock innovation that might otherwise be out of reach, and we're proud to now be part of that community.
Why This Partnership, and Why Now
At Zikodrive, we design and manufacture brushless DC, stepper, and asynchronous motor controllers for OEM customers across a wide range of industries. As a high-mix, low-volume manufacturer based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, we pride ourselves on the flexibility and technical depth we bring to every customer relationship. But the market we operate in is changing fast. Customers are demanding motor control solutions that squeeze out every last percentage point of efficiency — whether that's to extend battery life in electrified applications, reduce heat generation and thermal management overhead, or simply cut running costs in industrial and commercial deployments.
Improving efficiency in motor control isn't a trivial exercise. It sits at the intersection of power electronics design, control algorithm sophistication, component selection, and thermal management — and pushing meaningfully beyond current performance benchmarks requires the kind of deep, sustained research effort that's difficult to carry out alongside the day-to-day demands of running an OEM manufacturing business. This is exactly the gap a KTP is designed to bridge.
The University of Sheffield is home to one of the UK's foremost centres for research into electrical machines, drives, and power electronics, with a track record of world-class work in this space. Partnering with a team of that calibre gives us access to research capability, specialist knowledge, and rigorous methodology that will directly strengthen the products we deliver to our customers.
What the Project Will Involve
Central to the project will be the KTP Associate, who will effectively become part of the Zikodrive team for the duration of the partnership. They'll work hand-in-hand with our engineering staff, drawing on academic supervision from the University of Sheffield while being embedded in the practical realities of designing, testing, and manufacturing motor controllers that need to perform reliably in the field. This structure means the knowledge generated through the project doesn't stay locked away in a research paper — it gets built directly into how we design and build products, and stays within the business long after the partnership concludes.
What This Means for Our Customers
For our customers, this partnership represents a significant direct investment in the products they rely on. Efficiency improvements in motor control translate into tangible benefits: lower energy consumption, reduced heat that eases thermal design constraints, and potentially smaller, lighter, or lower-cost systems as a result of being able to do more with less. As our OEM partners continue to push their own products towards higher performance and lower energy use, having a motor controller supplier that is actively investing in efficiency research — backed by leading academic expertise — gives them confidence that Zikodrive will continue to keep pace with, and ideally get ahead of, where the market is heading. All the work will be rolled into our custom design service.
Why We're Excited
Genuinely, it's hard to overstate how excited the whole team is about this. Knowledge Transfer Partnerships are competitive, and having ours approved is a real vote of confidence — both in the strength of our proposal and in Zikodrive's potential to take on ambitious research and turn it into something practical. It's also a fantastic opportunity for our team to work alongside some brilliant academic minds, to learn new approaches, and to bring fresh thinking into how we design our products.
This project also reflects something we care about deeply as a business: that being a high-mix, low-volume manufacturer doesn't mean we can't be at the cutting edge of our field. If anything, it means we're well placed to take research insights and turn them into real products faster, because we're not constrained by the inertia of mass-production lines. This partnership is a chance to prove that out in a meaningful way.
Looking Ahead
Over the coming months, we'll be recruiting our KTP Associate, formalising the project plan with our academic supervisors at the University of Sheffield, and getting the research underway in earnest. We're looking forward to sharing updates as the project progresses, and ultimately to bringing the results of this work to our customers in the form of even more efficient, capable motor controllers.
We'd like to thank Innovate UK for their support of the KTP scheme, and the team at the University of Sheffield for their enthusiasm in getting this partnership off the ground. Watch this space — we think this is just the beginning of a really productive relationship.