Heliatek Raises €80M to Expand Manufacturing

Organic photovoltaic and solar film developer Heliatek GmbH has raised €80 million ($88 million) to finance the expansion of its HeliaFilm manufacturing capacity.

This financing round comprises €42 million ($46.8 million) in equity, €20 million ($22.3 million) in debt and about €18 million ($20 million) in subsidies.

“We are very excited to have successfully completed this financing round,” said Thibaud Le Séguillon, CEO of Heliatek. “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 market through supplying large quantities of our HeliaFilms to our customers in the building and construction material field.”

Heliatek plans to install its new manufacturing roll-to-roll facility on its site in Dresden over the next 18 months. It will offer a capacity of 1 million m² p.a. of solar films when fully ramped up. The company will continue in parallel its worldwide roll out of its HeliaFilm products to the building material and the automotive industry.

The financing was led by European energy company Innogy SE. New investors include ENGIE, BNP Paribas and CEE Group, an investment company of Lampe Equity Management specialized in renewable energy. Existing investors Aqton, BASF, eCAPITAL, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Innogy Venture Capital, Tudag and Wellington Partners also participated.

The European Investment Bank, under the InnovFin European Union Finance for Innovator program, granted a €20 million ($22.3 million) loan to Heliatek. The program is a joint initiative launched by the European Investment Bank in cooperation with the European Commission under Horizon 2020.