© anders sandberg
© anders sandberg

Heliatek raises €80m for expansion

Photovoltaic and solar films manufacturer Heliatek has raised €80m to finance the expansion of its HeliaFilm® manufacturing capacity.

The financing round is led by innogy SE with existing investors AQTON, BASF, eCAPITAL, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Innogy Venture Capital, TUDAG and Wellington Partners and others, as well as new investors including ENGIE, BNP Paribas and CEE Group.

Heliatek CEO Thibaud Le Séguillon said: “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.

“We will follow our strategy by expanding the Building Integrated Organic Photovoltaic (BIOPV) market through supplying large quantities of our HeliaFilms to our customers in the building and construction material field.”

The European Investment Bank (EIB), under the InnovFin – EU Finance for Innovators programme, granted a €20m loan to Heliatek. A joint initiative launched by the EIB in co-operation with Horizon 2020, EIB Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle added: “The EIB is committed to support innovation in Europe. Loans to innovative midcaps like Heliatek are key to driving Europe’s knowledge economy.”

Heliatek plans to install its new manufacturing roll-to-roll facility on its site in Dresden, Germany, over the next 18 months, offering a capacity of one million sqm of solar films when fully ramped up.