Fairmat, a Paris-based company that says it has developed a technology to recycle carbon fibre composites “infinitely”, has raised €26.5m in equity and €25m in debt as part of a total €51.5m Series B.
Carbon composites, which are made of carbon fibres, are materials highly sought-after because they are both light and resistant. They are used to build parts of planes and cars, electronic devices and sports equipment, but are difficult to recycle.
The equity round was led by French climate tech VC Slate and public bank Bpifrance, with participation from Swiss investors Cape Capital and Pictet Group, Singaporean investor Temasek, as well as French VC Singular and insurer CNP.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) granted the venture debt. It brings total funding raised by Fairmat to date to nearly €95m.
What does Fairmat do?
Most recycling methods for carbon composite waste and end-of-life products rely on burning them (pyrolysis) or dissolving them thanks to chemicals (solvolysis), which both come at a high environmental cost.
Fairmat’s technology instead relies on cutting the waste into small chips and re-assembling them into sheets of material, which it says recovers up to 90% of the waste material with ten times less CO2 emissions compared to traditional methods.
The startup uses AI-powered robots to carry out the process, which pick and mix up to 50k chips per hour to create sheets of high-quality material.
Earlier this year, Fairmat unveiled its “infinity recycling” technology to recycle its own materials. “We use a technology based on cold plasma to unglue the chips from each other,” Fairmat founder Benjamin Saada tells Sifted. “After that, they can immediately be used to make something else.”
“We’ll get to a stage where these materials will almost never go to waste.”
Saada says that the process is also cheaper, meaning that the component can be sold at a lower cost to customers.
Commercial traction
Fairmat has two production plants that are operational in France and in the US, and Saada says that the company is aiming to be producing 500 tonnes of new material per year in 2025.
The startup has secured €50m in contracted revenue, with customers including carbon composite producers like US multinational Hexcel, which have lots of waste material to manage, as well as product manufacturers like US ski brand DPS Skis and French sports equipment company Decathlon.
Fairmat plans to expand to reach more customers in mobility, electronics and energy, and hopes to double down on the US.
“We believe that the US will represent 50% of our order book by the end of the year,” says Saada.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/fairmat-series-b/
