Detectors & Imaging

Heliatek raises nearly $18M more to commercialize organic PV solar films

Oct. 16, 2017

Organic PV and solar films manufacturer Heliatek raised nearly $18 million more dollars from new and existing investors.

Gail Overton

Heliatek headquarters is shown with the active HeliaFilm facade.

Organic photovoltaic (PV) and solar films manufacturer Heliatek (Dresden, German) has raised nearly $18 million more dollars from new and existing investors. A strong interest among potential investors led to an extension of the last round of financing and will enable Heliatek to accelerate its development and speed up its worldwide market entry.

The company supplies HeliaFilm (trademarked) to partners in the building and construction materials industry for application directly on facades and roofs of industrial and commercial buildings. These solar films generate green, delocalized, decarbonized electricity.

An Asian Family office, based in Hong-Kong, and a German Family Holding participated in this round alongside existing shareholders that include innogy SE, Engie, BASF, BNP-Paribas, AQTON, eCapital, Innogy Venture Capital and Wellington Partners. The Asian Family office has extensive experience in China where it holds an interest in a large Xiamen-based manufacturing company in the touch solution area. The German Family Holding brings a deep first-hand knowledge and understanding of the construction and material industry.

"We are very happy to welcome these two new key investors. Our first Asian investor will help us refine and execute our strategy in that important region for our future," said Thibaud Le Séguillon, Heliatek's CEO. "The decision of the German Family Holding to invest is one more validation of our business model. We will follow our strategy by expanding the BIOPV-market (Building Integrated Organic PhotoVoltaic) through supplying large quantities of our HeliaFilms [trademarked] to our customers in the building and construction material field."

Heliatek is in the middle of sourcing and installing its new manufacturing roll-to-roll facility on its site in Dresden. It will offer a capacity of one million square meters per annum of solar films when fully ramped up.

SOURCE: Heliatek; http://www.heliatek.com/en/press/press-releases/details/heliatek-raises-an-additional-15-million

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.