The past year could be branded as a winning season for Bcomp, with new projects, awards and collaborations being announced week after week. A successful CHF 36M (US$40M) Series C funding round started off 2024, as investors like BMW i Ventures, Porsche Ventures, Volvo Cars Tech Fund and Airbus Ventures demonstrated their confidence in Bcomp’s high-performance, flax-based bio-composites.
With a promising new year dawning, CEO and co-founder, Christian Fischer, took time to reflect on some of the biggest successes and challenges over the past 12 months, as our 13-year-old company scaled up in the extremely competitive automotive industry as well as introduced innovative solutions across the motorsports, recreational, infrastructure and mass mobility sectors.
What were the challenges and opportunities in scaling a cleanteach company in 2024?
It’s never easy leading change, but we are providing a proven, commercially viable path away from a linear model of consumption towards more sustainable manufacturing and goods, especially in the traditionally petroleum-dependent automotive sector. As we scale, we have gained significant ground on the incredibly entrenched supply chains for conventional materials like plastic, glass and carbon fibre. But until our supply chain is fully scaled, incentives and a regulatory push will help us overcome that differential and eliminate the current premium on sustainability paid by OEMs trying to meet consumer demand for reduced climate impacts.
What is the status of the adoption of bio-composites by the automotive industry?
Motorsports teams have continued to champion high-performance bio-composites to decarbonise and lightweight race cars. This culminated in NASCAR’s BEV prototype featuring natural fibre bodywork, marking our US market entry, as well as the material’s use in Škoda, Toyota Hilux race cars, and Super Formula’s autonomous race cars. And we’ve found the traditional technology transfer from race to road is alive and well, from concept cars for consumers with Kia, Škoda and Italdesign, to series applications like the bio-based seatback produced by Sabelt for the new CUPRA Born VZ.
Our collaboration on the BMW M Visionary Materials Seat won the Altair Enlighten Award. These applications reflect our mission to decarbonise volume manufacturing in the automotive sector — not just by supplying innovative materials but offering complete solutions with the engineering support needed to seamlessly integrate bio-composites into existing production processes. While working on the above-mentioned prototyping and race projects, we have been nominated for large serial programs that will see the light as of late 2026, requiring us to scale production and build capacity in the background.
What is one of the most exciting trends in automotive interiors?
Sustainability doesn’t have to be limited to what’s under the paint or seat covers. We’re seeing the emergence of natural fibre materials as an exciting new option for visual surfaces inside vehicles. It’s a look that openly declares the driver’s values around sustainability, as well as replacing the bland uniformity of plastic with an organic, natural look and feel. This is now becoming a design movement, driven by some truly visionary colour and trim teams.
What is the potential scope of applications for bio-composites?
Over the past year, we’ve seen some exciting new applications that leverage the extraordinary mechanical features of flax-based composites. These range from the world’s first solar-powered ferry built using flax-based reinforcement materials for all semi- and non-structural components, which launched on the Adriatic last summer, to the ground-breaking architectural cladding on a school in France.
The scope of bio-composite applications also extends to the world of recreation and sports, in which Bcomp’s ampliTex™ reduced the vibrations, and improved the performance of both the ITACA bike from MCipollini and DMT Cycling and Movement’s SEQUENCE Ski Series. The wide scope of use of Bcomp’s flax-based technologies signals the growing demand for bio-based materials that empower designers and OEMs to decarbonise their products and manufacturing processes and introduce circularity into the consumption model.
What does 2025 look like for Bcomp?
Our commitment to helping decarbonise the automotive sector remains firm. We understand OEMs are under tremendous cost pressures, as they figure out how to respond to the growing demand for more sustainable vehicles. They also face changing macroeconomic winds, evolving legal frameworks and the penchant for preferring the entrenched, highly optimised supply chains for conventional materials.
Nonetheless, it’s a journey of collaborations and those to be announced this year will demonstrate that our bio-based, drop-in solutions are making commercially significant inroads in volume automotive, as we continue developing capacity, increasing the efficiency of our supply chains and expanding our solutions portfolio. Moreover, without compromising on performance, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do at Bcomp. With our recent achievement of B Corp certification in 2024, we are more committed than ever to advancing our sustainability initiatives and making a positive impact on the world. I’m thrilled to continue writing this story alongside a team of inspiring and dedicated talents who are truly the heart of Bcomp.
