MENU

Heliatek raises €80m for high volume roll-to-roll solar film production

Heliatek raises €80m for high volume roll-to-roll solar film production

Business news |
By Jean-Pierre Joosting



Heliatek plans to install its new manufacturing roll-to-roll facility on its site in Dresden over the next 18 months. This will create a manufacturing capacity of one million m² a year of solar film when fully ramped up, using the more eifficent roll-to-rroll approach. The company will continue its worldwide roll out of its HeliaFilm panel-based products to the building material and the automotive industry in parallel, creating over 50 new high-tech jobs in Saxony. IT currently employs 85 staff in Dresden and Ulm.

The financing, a series D round, consists €42 million in equity, €20 million in debt and about €18 million in subsidies. Heliatek is the first company to begin commercialization of large area OPV solar film and holds the world record for efficiency of such films at 13.2%. Its business model is to supply the custom-designed HeliaFilm® to partners in industries such as building and construction materials, automotive and light architectural structures. 

“We are very excited to have successfully completed this financing round. This allows us to strengthen our world leadership in organic solar film and to accelerate our expansion. We will continue to lead the way in enabling distributed energy generation on industrial and commercial buildings,” said Thibaud Le Séguillon, Heliatek CEO. “We will follow our strategy by expanding the BIOPV – Building Integrated Organic Photovoltaic – market through supplying large quantities of our HeliaFilms to our customers in the building and construction material field.”

The round was led by innogy SE, one of the leading European energy companies. New investors also include ENGIE, BNP Paribas and CEE Group, an investment company of Lampe Equity Management specializing in renewable energy. The existing investors, AQTON, BASF, eCAPITAL, HTGF, Innogy Venture Capital, TUDAG and Wellington Partners, also participated in this round. 


The European Investment Bank, under the “InnovFin – EU Finance for Innovators” program, also granted a €20 million loan to Heliatek. This program is a joint initiative launched by the European Investment Bank in cooperation with the European Commission under Horizon 2020. “The EIB is committed to support innovation in Europe. Loans to innovative midcaps like Heliatek are key to drive Europe’s knowledge economy,” said EIB Vice President Ambroise Fayolle, who is responsible for EIB’s business in Germany.

The company has also applied for the newly developed “KETs Pilot Lines project” technology and innovation funding scheme offered by the State of Saxony and financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Grants up to €18 million over the duration of the project can be expected.

www.heliatek.com

If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :    eeNews on Google News

Share:

Linked Articles
10s