Adaptavate Directs EIC Accelerator Money to Biochar Wallboard

Adaptavate, a Bristol company founded in 2014, wants the world's plasterboard makers to replace gypsum with lime-based binders, plant waste and char on the lines they already run. Its Breathaboard has no gypsum at all: a core of calcium carbonate-derived binders and plant fibres between two paper liners, which Global Gypsum Magazine describes as curing in a chamber rather than drying, with a patented option to speed the cure with CO2-rich flue gas. A version with char made by pyrolysing waste plant matter is what the company sells as carbon-negative.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, Breathaboard, at its October 2025 cut-off, as grant only, according to the Commission's list of selected companies. CORDIS records a signed grant agreement with an EU contribution of €2,496,987.50, running from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2028. The project is seven months into a two-year term, so this article sets out what was promised and what can already be checked.

A drop-in board, by design

The idea dates from Robinson's master's thesis at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales in 2014, as The Construction Index reported in 2022, when it described the board as lime and crop by-products such as oilseed rape and hemp between recycled paper. Global Gypsum gives the format as 12.5mm thick, 2.4m by 1.2m, with a density similar to gypsum board, made by extruding the core between two paper rolls in a continuous process.

The commercial bet is that existing manufacturers will adopt it. The company's website pitches a platform that lets gypsum wallboard makers produce carbon-storing board on their existing lines, and its January 2025 release says it licenses patented technology to manufacturers. Global Gypsum reported in 2024 that a commercial-scale UK factory was also planned, with fundraising under way. In that release the company says independent UKAS-accredited laboratories, which it does not name, found the board meets EN 520, the European plasterboard standard, on all performance criteria. Its end-of-2025 review uses the narrower phrase "EN 520-comparable". No test report has been published.

Which carbon number

The carbon claim is the product's selling point, and the figures differ between documents. The CORDIS objective says the board sequesters a total of 4kg of CO2 per square metre with net storage of 1kg. The January 2025 release instead describes up to 4kg saved per square metre against a standard board from a major UK maker, 3kg of it biogenic storage. A separate company release on the carbon-negative version says it removes more than 0.5kg per square metre produced. These may describe different product versions and baselines, but no document reconciles them.

The company says the Building Research Establishment verified its carbon calculation tool against EN 15804+A2, the standard for environmental product declarations. That is a verification of the method, per the company; no published environmental product declaration for Breathaboard was found in the sources reviewed on 4 November 2026. A 2022 to 2024 Innovate UK project with the University of Bath, listed on the university's research portal as finished, set out to test and validate the carbon-negative claim for the biochar version; its results are not posted there.

What the EIC is paying for

CORDIS states the plan: take the board from technology readiness level 6 to 8 through a tenfold manufacturing scale-up, co-locating the pyrolysis that makes the char with the carbonation stage, so that residual heat cures the board and the CO2 mineralises the binder. The feedstock is described as construction waste. The project also aims to secure CE marking for the EU market and to set up a route to validate carbon credits. CORDIS gives no total project cost; Adaptavate's February 2026 announcement calls the grant part of a €3.5 million project.

The commercial targets in the objective are the company's own: 9.5 million square metres of licensed annual production by 2030, €17.1 million of licensing revenue for Adaptavate, and €570 million of sales for its partners. For scale, Global Gypsum reported that the Bristol pilot line, commissioned in the first quarter of 2024, makes "some tens of thousands" of square metres a year.

1. Board meeting EN 520Company-reportedTested by unnamed UKAS-accredited laboratories, per the January 2025 release; no report published.
2. Tenfold scale-up to TRL 8Under wayProject runs to March 2028; no CORDIS report yet.
3. CE marking for the EU marketNot yet shownNo CE marking or European technical assessment announced; Global Gypsum reported one was being pursued in 2024.
4. Carbon credit validationNot yet shownNo registry or methodology named in the sources reviewed.
5. Licensing partnersOption signedA licence option with an unnamed international producer, per the September 2026 release.

Trials, partners and a lime producer

The board's reported installations are pilot fit-outs; no sales volume has been published. Carbon Herald reported in March 2024 that the events company Unusual Rigging was the first user of boards from the pilot line. The April 2025 funding release, carried by BeBeez, named trials on UK commercial sites with British Land, Royal London Asset Management Property and the fit-out contractor Overbury. In June 2026 the company announced a trial in Legal & General's new London headquarters, again with Overbury, and said more than 100 projects had registered interest and that letters of intent and offtake agreements put demand above £19 million. Those agreements are not published, and the release does not say how much board the trial used.

The industrial tie that goes furthest on paper is with SigmaRoc, a lime producer. Global Gypsum reported in April 2025 that the two signed a memorandum of understanding for an industrial demonstrator plant and a European supply chain for calcium carbonate-based wallboard, and that SigmaRoc invested through its venture arm, Skreenhouse Ventures. In Asia, the company says it installed a demonstration wall at The GEAR, the Singapore innovation centre of the Japanese contractor Kajima, in March 2026.

The product on general sale is the older one. The directors' report in the accounts to July 2025, filed at Companies House, says Breathaplasta is sold through Jewson and Travis Perkins. The accounts are filed without a profit and loss account, so no sales figure is public.

The money

Adaptavate has been funded by rounds of equity and UK grants. The Construction Index reported a £2.16 million round in April 2022 and a separate Innovate UK grant of over £800,000 for the pilot line. Specfinish reported a £1 million Innovate UK Smart grant in October 2024, with the University of York's Biorenewables Development Centre, to cut costs using waste-derived aggregates. The April 2025 pre-Series A raised £2.7 million, and the company then put its total from investment and public grants at "nearly £9 million". Global Gypsum gave that round as €3.16 million.

In September 2026 the company announced a £4 million first close that combines equity, including from Low Carbon Innovation Fund 3, with EIC and Innovate UK Investor Partnerships money, without splitting the parts; Dealroom reported the same terms and a £1.3 million second close open until the end of 2026. Companies House shows a share allotment on 3 July 2026 and a reduction of the share premium account backed by a directors' solvency statement dated 25 June 2026. These figures come from different sources and different currencies and are not added together here.

The filed accounts show losses covered by new equity. The accumulated deficit in the profit and loss reserve rose from £484,416 at July 2022 to £4,229,474 at July 2025, while share premium rose from £1,504,277 to £6,195,967. Cash stood at £1,573,568 in July 2025, after the April round, against £641,773 a year earlier. Creditors due within one year were £205,319. The average workforce rose from 10 in the year to July 2022 to 25 in the year to July 2025.

Why it fits the EIC's agenda

The award came from the EIC challenge on upscaling advanced materials, and the project argues that buildings account for 37% of global emissions and that building materials can serve as carbon removal infrastructure. A UK company can hold an EIC grant because the UK became associated to Horizon Europe on 1 January 2024, as Euronews and the Brussels Times reported. The European angle is the licensing model: the project names Europe's 556 million square metre wallboard market as its target, and its plan relies on manufacturers and suppliers such as SigmaRoc adopting the process rather than on plants of its own.

Adaptavate was not asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.