FibeRio, the developer and manufacturer of novel Forcespinning nanofiber production systems has announced it has completed a $13M capital raising exercise led by two global strategic investors – 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 FibeRio’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.

FibeRio aims to provide the technology and capital equipment to transform the materials market through the unlimited availability of cost effective nanofibers. Founded in 2009, the company says it has already delivered several large scale industrial Forcespinning units to industry leading customers across the globe. 

In December 2011 FibeRio announced that Kertak Nanotechnology, a leading manufacturer of ceramic nanofibers located in the Czech Republic, had invested in its new continuous nanofibre production system, the Cyclone FE 1.1 with Forcespinning technology. Kertak manufactures cutting edge ceramic nanofibers for a broad range of industries including batteries, fuel cells, catalysts, solar cells and high end cosmetics.

Commenting on the $13M raise, Ellery Buchanan, CEO of FibeRio said: “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.”

“This collaboration will greatly accelerate our vision of the Forcespinning process becoming the world’s leading, cost effective process to produce nanofibers at scale never before achieved.”

Disruptive, platform technology

According to FibeRio, its Forcespinning is a disruptive, platform technology which enables leading manufacturers to produce nanofibers on a truly 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 electro spinning, Forcespinning does not require materials to contain certain dielectric properties for processing which limits the materials that can be produced into fibre.  Nanofiber applications are used in a variety of markets including filtration, nonwovens, battery separators, and textiles, biomedical and conductive applications,” the Texas headquartered company said in a statement.

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 nanofibers 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 nanofiber growth for all levels of production. We are excited to partner with a company that will be driving the deployment of nanofibers for the foreseeable future,” commented Pascal Siegwart and Todd Dauphinais, partners at Aster Capital in a joint statement.    

The combined breadth of resins represented by SABIC and Aster is said to cover everything from commodity polymers such as polypropylene and nylon to high performance materials including fluoropolymers, polysulfones, polyethylene imines, and liquid crystal polymers among others.

FibeRio claims that a number of these materials have never been made into nanofibers before and can offer materials performance advantages to FibeRio Forcespinning equipment customers - FibeRio, SABIC and Solvay will all benefit through the integration of a wide range of resins with Forcespinning technology.

FibeRio’s existing shareholders also participated in this financing round, including the University of Texas System - UT Horizon Fund, the University of Texas - Pan American, the State of Texas, Silverton Partners and Cottonwood Technology Fund I. As part of this financing, James Wilson, of SABIC’s Innovative Plastics Strategic Business Unit, and Todd Dauphinais of Aster Capital will join the FibeRio board of directors.

www.fiberiotech.com