FibeRio, the developer and manufacturer of Forcespinning® nanofibre production systems, has raised $13 million in capital from two global strategic investors.
The investors are SABIC Ventures B.V., Saudi Basic Industries Corporation’s corporate venture capital arm, and Aster Capital Partners, sponsored by Solvay, Schneider Electric, Alstom and the European investment fund. The funding will be used to accelerate the company’s commercial growth, introduce larger scale production systems to the market and execute on a growing pipeline of orders and global opportunities with industry leading customers.
“The support of two of the leading, knowledgeable strategic investors in this space, SABIC and Aster Capital, is a strong validation of the uniqueness of our Forcespinning technology and will help the company accelerate our growth, open new markets and enable new applications for all of our customers” commented Ellery Buchanan, chief executive officer of FibeRio. “This collaboration will greatly accelerate our vision of the Forcespinning process becoming the world’s leading, cost effective process to produce nanofibres at scale never before achieved.”
FibeRio says that Forcespinning is a disruptive, platform technology which enables leading manufacturers to produce nanofibres on a commercial scale in a cost effective way using a wide range of polymers and an environmentally sensitive process. Forcespinning is the only fine fibre production system capable of both melt and solution spinning from lab scale to full industrial scale production. Unlike electrospinning, Forcespinning does not require materials to contain certain dielectric properties for processing which limits the materials that can be produced into fibre. Nanofibre applications are used in a variety of markets including filtration.
Hans Kolnaar of SABIC Ventures commented: “FibeRio’s unique processing technology not only increases our market reach, but offers SABIC an opportunity to move further down the value chain with innovative fibers for our customers.”
“We view the cost effective production of nanofibres at scale as a key technological focus for the nonwovens marketplace for a wide variety of applications in the filtration, energy, medical, hygiene and textiles markets. Thanks to our sponsor, Solvay, we were able to validate that FibeRio has a unique breakthrough technology to accelerate nanofibre growth for all levels of production. We are excited to partner with a company that will be driving the deployment of nanofibres for the foreseeable future” commented Pascal Siegwart and Todd Dauphinais, partners at Aster Capital in a joint statement.
