TIME TO ACT: Innovative Resilience for the Energy Transition
Time To ACT has spent the past two years proving that an engineering group built on undervalued, overlooked assets can hold its nerve when markets wobble. With Diffusion Alloys re-engaging traditional heavy industry customers, GreenSpur Wind branching into tidal energy, and the recent addition of MTE Heat Treatment, COO Jason Moody tells Energy Focus how the Group is adapting without losing sight of the long-term prize.
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Interview with Jason Moody, COO
In 2025, the Time To ACT Group was aggressively building a model it set in motion with its 2024 listing on the Aquis Stock Exchange: find engineering businesses with real technical depth that have been under-resourced by previous owners, then give them the strategic direction, capital and operational discipline to punch above their weight in the renewable energy space. Diffusion Alloys, the specialist coatings business in Middlesbrough, and GreenSpur Wind, the generator innovator, have formed the core of that model from the start. Previously, Diffusion Alloys saw opportunity in the hydrogen space; GreenSpur was positioned well for a booming offshore wind launch. Now, they are joined by MTE Heat Treatment, giving the Group a third pillar of specialist capability.
Moody’s own background sits behind much of that operational thinking. An MBA graduate and mechanical engineer, he built his career inside multinational manufacturing organisations before joining Time To ACT to prepare the Group for its stock market listing.
“I am lean and manufacturing operations focused and I want to build the group into a similar structure as some of the bigger multinationals that I have worked in before,” he says. “I am very much interested in efficiency, whether that is technological or operational. I am very excited for the acquisitive growth that we have in front of us as a group. Right now, I am fully embedded in Diffusion Alloys and our recent acquisition.”
That appetite has not dimmed, but the environment it operates in has shifted over the past 12 months. Government support for parts of the hydrogen economy has cooled internationally, and early-stage clean-tech developers, who depend on external funding to reach scale, have felt the squeeze. Offshore wind has slowed with pricing challenges and geopolitical pressure. Time To ACT’s response has been to recalibrate rather than retreat, sending Diffusion Alloys and GreenSpur back towards markets they know well while continuing to build the wider Group through acquisition.
SHIFTING GROUND
“We remain positive about the long-term role of hydrogen, and a number of significant projects are still progressing. What has changed is the pace. The market is developing more slowly than many originally anticipated, with some projects delayed, resized or taking longer to reach final investment decisions; not just for us but for the whole industry,” Moody explains. Some major green and blue hydrogen projects have not advanced as quickly as previously expected, and some have been resized or seen funding decisions pushed back, some of which were meant to build demand for coatings suppliers like Diffusion Alloys further down the chain, leaving both the R&D pipeline and the mature project pipeline underperforming against what was projected.
Moody is clear that the hydrogen economy is still a focus and the group will not retreat from the industry, but is moving slower than planned. Rather than persist with a strategy built entirely around emerging hydrogen demand, Diffusion Alloys is re-engaging the industries it built its 60-year reputation on. “We were focused on a pivot away from oil and gas and petrochem, and we are now moving back to that in a way that our customers now understand they need to do better with their emissions,” says Moody. Chemical and cement manufacturers developing their own decarbonisation technology are a growing part of the order book, sectors in which Diffusion Alloys already has decades of coating expertise and long-standing relationships.
“Sustainable Aviation Fuel is another increasingly active market for Diffusion Alloys,” he adds. “The high-temperature process environments involved create demanding conditions for critical components, and the Group’s coatings have already demonstrated the potential to significantly extend component life in these systems.”
It is a pragmatic rather than a defensive move. “We are not turning our backs on any markets, but we are acknowledging market turmoil and reestablishing existing markets,” Moody adds. The aluminide, chromide and boride diffusion coatings behind that repositioning protect components at extreme temperatures, and are as relevant to a cement kiln or petrochemical reactor as to a hydrogen electrolyser.
NEW WATERS
GreenSpur Wind is following a similar pattern of diversification, though for different reasons. Its axial flux permanent magnet generator technology, protected by a growing international patent portfolio, has reached the readiness levels needed for commercialisation.
“We are in the middle of a strategic shift because we have realised that the big wind industry is so far away that a small startup like GreenSpur, despite how good its technology is, is never going to break through,” says Moody.
In its place, GreenSpur has started applying the same generator platform to tidal and hydro power, sectors with a smaller but more accessible commercial pathway. In December 2025, GreenSpur signed a design services contract with Severn Estuary Tidal Bar Ltd, agreeing to carry out a feasibility study on adapting its axial flux technology for use as a submerged generator within SETB’s Very Low Head tidal turbine system.
“There is an estimated £750 million generator supply chain and that doesn’t include the billions of pounds for other infrastructure and offtake,” Moody says. Independent analysis from the Severn Estuary Commission suggests tidal-range schemes in the estuary alone could deliver seven to 21 TWh of low-carbon electricity a year, with the UK’s National Energy System Operator pointing to a need for several gigawatts of tidal-range capacity by 2050, a far more reachable near-term opportunity for a licensing business like GreenSpur than a multi-megawatt offshore turbine contract.
Wind has not been abandoned. “The wind industry, and specifically offshore wind, is absolutely our end goal, and our technology is proven,” Moody confirms.
Arup analysis of the sector points to generator innovation, alongside foundations and substations, as key to cutting offshore wind costs, and GreenSpur’s pitch of smaller, lighter generators free from scarce rare earth materials speaks directly to that agenda. Onshore repowering projects and wind start-ups building new turbine platforms give GreenSpur a route to revenue while the bigger prize matures.
“Diversification into adjacent markets is very important,” Moody says. “The messaging for GreenSpur for a long time has been offshore wind only, but the fact that we are now open to hydro, tidal, industrial waste heat recovery and more shows that we are agile and flexible.”
The International Energy Agency has flagged exactly this kind of uncertainty across the sector, noting that venture capital funding for energy technologies fell by more than 20% in 2023 and 2024 after years of rapid growth. GreenSpur’s shift into adjacent markets is a direct answer to that environment.
ADDING MTE
The clearest evidence of Time To ACT’s continued acquisitive growth is MTE, acquired through the Group’s newly formed subsidiary Metal Treatment & Engineering Limited. Based in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, the business provides heat treatment, induction hardening, gear cutting, grinding and metallurgical processing services to customers across automotive, marine, energy and precision engineering sectors. The investment has safeguarded more than 30 jobs.
“We recently completed that acquisition because it is very complementary to our existing portfolio, focused on thermal engineering capabilities,” says Moody.
Time To ACT Executive Chairman Chris Heminway describes the deal as characteristic of how the Group operates. “The acquisition of MTE is a good example of what Time To ACT does well: identifying and executing the acquisition of a complementary business that falls below the radar screen of established larger competitors,” he says. “Both MTE and our existing Diffusion Alloys business have valuable know-how in what happens to small and large metal parts when furnaced at high temperatures. MTE’s capabilities in distortion control are well known and, under common ownership, we will create a new layer of expertise.”
The deal was supported by Kreston Reeves, the Group’s auditor and reporting accountant since its 2024 listing, reflecting the discipline Time To ACT applies to its acquisitions even as it moves quickly to secure complementary assets.
LOOKING AHEAD
Beyond the individual businesses, the Group’s central marketing function is starting to generate its own momentum. “There has certainly been growth and, as a parent company, we provide the central marketing function,” Moody says. “In the last 12 months, we have been spinning that wheel to monitor the market closely. Wherever there are opportunities, we will target that market, and that has given us real traction.”
Longer-term, the strategy will deliver deliberate diversification and resilience across both established industrial and emerging energy markets. “We continue to believe in the long-term energy transition opportunities, including hydrogen and SAF, while also building a broader and more resilient engineering group around established industrial markets, adjacent applications and complementary acquisitions,” Moody confirms.
That combination of patience and opportunism sums up where Time To ACT sits today. Market conditions have forced a recalibration, hydrogen funding has slowed and wind OEMs remain a long game, so Diffusion Alloys and GreenSpur have both widened their horizons to keep growing in the short term. But the thesis that took Time To ACT to a public listing, that overlooked engineering businesses with genuine technical depth can be built into a group capable of supplying the energy transition at scale, remains intact. MTE adds a third specialism to a Group built around complementary capability, and the technologies at GreenSpur and Diffusion Alloys are proven and ready to commercialise.
The route to growth may look different to 12 months ago, but the destination has not changed.