Zouk Capital

Zouk Capital

Founded in 1999 by Samer Salty, Zouk Capital operates as an independent investment manager headquartered in London. The firm emerged from the early wave of European cleantech investing and later pivoted toward a concentrated strategy centered on sustainable infrastructure, electrification, and resource efficiency. Salty, a former investment banker, structured Zouk as a specialist manager rather than a diversified platform, which shaped its later public-sector relationships. Zouk deploys growth equity and infrastructure capital across the energy transition, targeting companies that provide enabling technology and physical assets for decarbonization. The strategy spans renewable energy generation, electric vehicle charging networks, smart grid software, and circular-economy infrastructure. A signature mandate is the Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund (CIIF), a £400M vehicle established in partnership with the UK government and managed by Zouk. Confirmed portfolio positions include InstaVolt, one of the UK's largest public EV rapid-charging networks, and Zest, an EV charging provider focused on workplace and destination sites. The firm invests primarily in the UK and Europe, with a bias toward asset-backed growth stage companies. The team operates from a single London office, with a lean investment group built around the CIIF mandate and parallel private funds. The partnership with the UK Treasury and HM Government's infrastructure advisory bodies is a defining operational feature, creating a co-investment structure where public capital sits alongside institutional limited partners. In 2023 the fund made follow-on commitments to existing portfolio platforms and accelerated deployment into British EV infrastructure, consistent with the government's zero-emission vehicle targets. Zouk's structural differentiator is its hybrid character: it is a private fund manager that executes a government-aligned mandate without itself being a state entity. The CIIF structure locks in concessionary public capital as an anchor, which shapes Zouk's ability to underwrite long-duration infrastructure assets and attract pension fund co-investors. That architecture is rare among UK growth equity firms and ties the firm's deployment pace directly to national infrastructure policy cycles.