Swedish advanced material technology scale-up Graphmatech, a 2025 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, makes cutting-edge graphene-infused materials for a wide variety of industrial uses. Applications include polymers for constructing pressure vessels, conductive pipes, industrial packaging for the hydrogen economy, better metals and a high-speed filament for 3D printing that enables the making of custom parts in a day.
“We are unlocking the industrial potential of graphene by making it cost efficient for large scale industries,” says CEO Olivia Nestius.“We provide them with advanced materials that have higher performance than previous materials while also being more resource efficient, more innovative and more sustainable.”
Since 2010, when Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking experiments focused on graphene the scientific community has talked about how this super strong, super thin, and super versatile new material could change the way products are made.
So far it has not lived up to the hype. “The main challenge is making graphene at scale because it is a very delicate material and is difficult to work with,” says Nestius. “It tends to clump together when you are trying to integrate graphene into other materials and when it does come together you often lose properties like conductivity and strength.” The second issue is cost, she says. “The finest type of graphene is very expensive,” she says. It is priced at a very high premium which has hindered use by large scale industries.”
Graphmatech’s Aros Graphene is a patented graphene hybrid material technology which it says has solved the long-standing agglomeration issue in graphene applications. Invented by the Swedish scale-up’s founder and Chief Technology Officer Dr. Mamoun Taher, the technology keeps graphene layers separate.
Coating particles of diverse materials with a thin layer of graphene allows them to take on some of the properties of graphene, rendering them more conductive, robust, and smoother, enabling large scale industrial use of inexpensive graphene, says Nestius.
Graphmatech makes a variety of different materials from the same technology base. In close collaboration with its customers, it develops, tests and certifies materials to solve their pressing material problems and improve their sustainability, she says.
When they’re used in new or retrofitted hydrogen infrastructure, like pipes and pressure vessels, the company’s polymer graphene composites reduce hydrogen leakage by up to 83%, says Nestius.
Leveraging the barrier properties of graphene when mixed with polymers used in pressure vessels hinders gasses or moisture to go through. This has three major benefits, she says. The first is environmental. Hydrogen is eleven times worse than carbon dioxide so reducing leakage could prevent the potential negative climate change impact from hydrogen.
The second is safety. Hydrogen can cause fires and explosions if it is not handled properly so it is important to keep it in a locked environment. The third is that with added mechanical strength it is also possible to reduce the weight and size of the pressure vessel, a benefit of interest to automakers who want to make hydrogen fueled cars and trucks as lightweight as possible, Nestius says.
“One of the largest car manufacturers, which is working on hydrogen cars, is impressed with our results,” she says. “We are in a good place because a lot of these developments are happening now, and we want to be a part of it.”
The Hydrogen Economy is a strategic priority for both Sweden and Europe so Graphmatech has been awarded grants from both the European Union and the Swedish Energy Agency.
Earlier this month Graphmatech received its latest EU grant – this time for €2.5 million – to build a pilot facility for its storage technology. The company said the new facility at its Uppsala headquarters would allow it to demonstrate its polymer graphene hydrogen storage lining technology on a large scale. The new facility will include a production line to boost the firm’s annual production capacity from five to 200 tons of products and allow it to deliver materials for industrial testing.
Hydrogen is expected to play an important role in achieving EU objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum of 55% by 2030 and reach Net Zero. The European hydrogen policy framework was first proposed by the Commission in July 2021 as part of the ‘Fit for 55’ package. It includes binding targets for the uptake of renewable hydrogen in industry and transport by 2030.
To achieve the infrastructure scale-up and technology advancements needed to meet demand Graphmatech earlier this year announced a strategic collaboration with British climate tech startup Levidian to co-develop new graphene-based polymer solutions for the hydrogen sector and other high-growth industries.
Levidian’s patented LOOP technology captures carbon from methane before combustion, enabling heavy emitters and hard-to-abate industries to decarbonize gas flows while producing clean hydrogen and high-quality graphene.
“The graphene that they are producing is carbon negative, so we have a source of graphene that is beneficial from an environmental perspective,” says Nestius. “They are planning to produce hydrogen and graphene in different regions so we can collaborate on a local basis and use the same facility to take the graphene and infuse it into polymers hydrogen storage products.”
She says the same graphene enforced polymers can be used to make existing gas pipes fit for transporting hydrogen, reducing the leakage of any gases. It can also be used for oxygen vessels.
Another area where Graphmatech is focusing is industrial packaging. It is using its technology to replace harmful plastics used in medical or food packaging with recyclable material reinforced with graphene to improve its barrier properties and strength. “Graphene, a small molecule, works really well in thin film production and Graphmatech can play a big role in the critical transition away from PFAS [which contain forever chemicals harmful to the environment and human health] in packaging products,” she says.
Graphmatech is working with a large Swedish company on graphene enforced recyclable medical pouches as well as a European company on electronics packaging that is electrostatic discharge (ESD) safe, meaning it reduces static electricity to protect against damage to electrostatic-sensitive devices.
The Swedish scale-up also says its technology can help make better metals. “We can either make stronger metals, more conductive metals or make lower friction metals and sometimes all three,” says Nestius. “We can coat powder with graphene and use it in different production processes such as isostatic pressing to create components that are stronger and more conductive,” she says, “At the component level we can do thermal spraying of full metal components, which after polishing can reduce friction by 70%.” Targeted customers include companies that produce metal components for advanced manufacturing or rail transport.
3D printing is another area that promises to benefit from Grapmatech’s technology. Its high-speed ESD filament for 3D printing, C-PETG, developed in collaboration with Filalab UAB, boasts printing speed of up to 120 mm/s, which is 20% to 120% faster than traditional ESD polymer solutions, allowing for the creation of custom parts in less than a day, according to the company. The new conductive polymer can be used to print parts in electronic manufacturing ranging from packaging, to handling equipment, to tools for assembly.
Graphmatech competes against other substitute materials, such as carbon black, for certain applications. “We are proving that graphene is cleaner, purer, more conductive and you don’t need as much,” says Nestius.
She says that Graphmatech has a competitive advantage over graphene producers such as NanoXplore and First Graphene which try to integrate along the value chain to apply their material. “They are limited to one type of graphene while we can work with several types of graphene to fit the purpose of the customer’s unique application,” Nestius says.
The Swedish scale-up is part of Hub71, an accelerator in Abu Dhabi and is making fast progress in the Middle East, says Nestius. It is also part of a deep tech accelerator program in Singapore.
The company, which was launched in 2017, has raised a total of €12 million. Private backers include ABB Technology Ventures, Walerud Ventures, Molindo Energy, InnoEnergy, and Almi Invest Greentech.
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