Capital for innovative carbon processing technology from Stuttgart

The company Compositence GmbH is set to play a major role in providing broader applications for carbon-fibre components. This promises to not only benefit the environment but also to enable sustainable company growth. Joint financing through High-Tech Gründerfonds and the Seedfonds Baden-Württemberg represents a further step towards industrial applications for the innovative engineered products company.

The company’s innovative concept is a process technology for processing carbon fibres. This concept is based on a robot-guided laying head for depositing slivers of fibre. This decreases the amount of manual work required in carbon processing. Both production costs and production time are considerably reduced. Cut-offs from the expensive raw material are also reduced to a minimum.

“As a supplier of lighweight construction-technology Compositence works in an attractive future market. The company offers promising solutions with a clearly defined customer benefit. Its customer base is well-balanced. The dynamics within the lightweight construction sector offers an excellent outlook for the company’s development,” says Florentin Walker from the Mittelständische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg.

Compositence process saves resources and reduces costs for carbon-fibre reinforced plastics 

“Our process is of particular benefit for curved surfaces, such as car wings. The feedback we have received from the target markets of automobile, wind power and air travel is very promising,” report managers Volker Witzel and Ingo Karb. The two engineers developed the idea at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Aircraft Design and have registered it as a patent.

Joint founder Gregor Weber adds: “Everyone is talking about lightweight construction at the moment. Even so, we were surprised by the large amount of interest that our technology has met with. We are very pleased to be able to enhance our company’s progress, together with High-Tech Gründerfonds and Seedfonds BW.”

Development on target: objective is the cost-effective production of components in high quantities 

“Sample components can be used to demonstrate the process’s potential to initial customers. We have a lot of things planned and want to start series production as soon as possible,” says Markus Thiessen, partner responsible for sales.

Benjamin Erhart, Investment Manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds, shares this level of confidence in further plans for growth. “Lighter than aluminium, stronger than steel: carbon-fibre reinforced plastics have a fascinating application potential. Compositence is providing an important component for the required process technology at just the right time. We expect our partnership to be a long and profitable one.”

About Compositence
Compositence, a University of Stuttgart spin-off, offers innovative platform technology combining the fully automatic and low-cost mass production of composite components with maximum flexibility in the fibre architecture.

Contact
Compositence GmbH
Gregor Weber
Nobelstraße 15
70569 Stuttgart
Germany
Tel.:    +49 711 685-68482
gregor.weber(at)compositence.de
www.compositence.de

About the MBG
The MBG invests in small and medium-sized enterprises based in Baden-Württemberg with investments ranging from € 25.000 up to € 2.5 m. The MBG invests in all stages from seed to start-up and later stage. The MBG is a publicly supported private equity firm. It works closely together with the Bürgschaftsbank Baden-Württemberg GmbH and receives support from the federal state of Baden-Württemberg and the German government. Therefore it offers attractive conditions to the companies it invests in.

About Seedfonds BW
Together with the High-Tech Gründerfonds the Seedfonds BW supports technology companies based in Baden-Württemberg in the early start-up or seed stage with private equity. The investors of Seedfonds BW are the federal state of Baden-Württemberg (Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs), the L-Bank, LBBW Venture Capital GmbH and MBG Mittelständische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg GmbH.

Contact:
MBG Mittelständische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg GmbH
Florentin Walker
Investment Manager
Werastraße 15-17
70182 Stuttgart
Tel.: +49 0711 1645-772
Fax: +49 0711 1645-8772
florentin.walker@mbg.de
www.mbg.de

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
High-Tech Gründerfonds invests venture capital in promising technology companies that turn innovative concepts into viable businesses. Seed financing aims to help start-ups guide their innovation to the prototype or proof-of-concept stage or to market launch. High-Tech Gründerfonds provides seed financing of approximately €500,000. It supports high-tech companies by way of its investment managers and its highly-qualified network of coaches, investors and specialists. In individual cases it can invest up to a total of €2 m per company. The investors in this public private partnership are the German Federal Ministry for Business and Technology, the KfW Banking Group as well as the six industrial groups of BASF, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Robert Bosch, Daimler and Carl Zeiss. High-Tech Gründerfonds has an investment volume totalling approx. €272 m.

Contact:
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Benjamin Erhart
Investment Manager
Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2
53175 Bonn
Tel.:    +49 228 82300-114
Fax:    +49 228 82300-050
b.erhart@high-tech-gruenderfonds.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de