Celwise and the EIC Accelerator: Steam-Molded Fibre Seeks Buyers

Rigid food packaging is still mostly plastic, and the project Celwise AB brought to the European Innovation Council argues that the reason is technical: in the words of its CORDIS summary, shortcomings of current fibre technology limit its scalability, cost-effectiveness, barrier functionality and versatility. The Norrköping company says it has an answer in what it calls steam molding: heated, 3D-printed steel moulds that flash the water in the pulp into steam and drive it out in a pressure impulse, giving cups, tubs, lids and capsules in production cycles of about seven seconds, according to its website.

The European Innovation Council selected the project, CELWISE, at the 1 October 2025 cut-off for blended finance, according to the EIC's list of selected companies. CORDIS records a grant agreement signed on 29 May 2026, a contribution of €2,499,415.63 and a project running from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2028. Five months into that period, the evidence that the technology works at industrial scale is still the company's own.

Steam instead of a dryer

In 2021, Digital Engineering described the company's patented method as removing water from the fibre faster than conventional paper moulding, so the fibres bond again sooner. Celwise describes a five-step line on its steam molding page: porous stainless steel moulds made by additive manufacturing, a metered dose of slurry into each mould, direct-heated moulds that turn surface water into steam whose pressure drives moisture out of the mould's micro-channels, calibration steps for surface and dimensions, and automatic mould cleaning with recovered process water. The company presents it as a hybrid, distinct from both wet moulding and dry moulding.

The patents back the description of the parts. The earliest, US 10,435,848, filed in December 2014 with inventors John Andersson, Udo Vogt and David A. Pierce, covers a porous mould with engineered channels. A later one, US 12,195,923, granted in January 2025 to Celwise with Pierce as inventor, covers hot pressing in two moulds with a weaker vacuum in the first to save energy. An IP database lists 23 patents and applications, nine of them granted in the US between 2019 and 2025. The same Digital Engineering article reported that the moulds were 3D printed in 316L stainless steel by ExOne, with Pierce estimating tooling 30% to 40% cheaper than other methods.

Numbers that have moved

The performance figures come from Celwise and have changed over time. In December 2023, the US design firm Kinetic Vision announced a partnership with Celwise and described its process as moulding about five times faster, with cycle times comparable to plastic and a 90% cut in energy use. The current website claims about 50% less energy and water, about 20% less material and a variability below plus or minus 3%. No independent test of either set of figures could be found.

The CORDIS objective sets the commercial case: 520 billion rigid food packages a year, most of them plastic and not recyclable, and a market it puts at €9 to 10 billion a year. It states that Celwise has demonstrated the complete, fully automatic production system at the performance level needed for a commercial alternative to plastic. That is the applicant's statement in its project summary; CORDIS carries no report or result yet that would show it.

A technology supplier with a machine partner

Celwise presents itself as a technology supplier: Caplight describes it as a company that develops and licenses fibre moulding technology, and its website describes a path from concept study and feasibility through pilot validation and line integration to a commissioned line handed over to the customer, aimed at converters and brands. The machines come from SACMI: the 2023 Kinetic Vision release says Celwise had partnered with SACMI for machine manufacturing, and Celwise's news page shows Celwise presenting steam molding at Interpack in Düsseldorf in May 2026, with a link to its partner SACMI's appearance there, and at Pack Expo in Chicago from 18 to 21 October 2026, where Celwise exhibited with SACMI Group and called it its innovation partner. SACMI's own Interpack announcement describes a cellulose cap line based on dry moulding and does not mention Celwise.

The Pack Expo post invites visitors to see how brands and converters are using the solutions, but names none of them. Rigid Sustainable Solutions, a US company, lists Celwise as a partner without saying what the partnership covers. Searches of the company's news, trade press and partner pages on 4 November 2026 found no announced customer order, licence or commissioned production line.

A small company with growing losses

The last annual report found, for 2023 and approved in June 2024, records net sales of SEK 9.5 million, down from SEK 16.0 million in 2021, and a loss after financial items of SEK 23.1 million, against SEK 7.7 million in 2021. The report does not say what the sales were for. The company had an average of four employees. The auditor, Ernst & Young, gave an unqualified opinion. The company data site Funnelfeedr lists the company as active with six employees; accounts for 2024 and 2025 could not be retrieved from the public sources tried.

Preference shares and convertibles financed the losses. The same report records a set-off issue of 512 preference shares for SEK 15.35 million in 2023, an SEK 21 million convertible at 8% interest, and after the balance sheet date a second convertible of SEK 19.1 million, both due to convert into new preference share classes by 1 October 2025, the day of the EIC cut-off. Whether they converted is not public. Equity stood at SEK 14.6 million at the end of 2023, an equity ratio of 45%.

The EIC selected Celwise for blended finance, which combines the grant with a possible equity investment by the EIC Fund. CORDIS records only the grant and gives no total project cost. The data aggregator Caplight lists the EIC Fund as an investor in a round dated 20 February 2026, with the amount hidden; no announcement of an EIC Fund investment by the EIC or the company could be found, so the equity component is unverified.

Where it fits in EU policy

The project lands in the middle of a regulatory change. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, entered into force on 11 February 2025 and generally applies from 12 August 2026; it requires all packaging on the EU market to be recyclable in an economically viable way by 2030, restricts certain single-use plastic formats and limits PFAS in food-contact packaging, as the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform also summarises. CORDIS counts 40% of the grant towards climate action and 40% towards biodiversity. The project summary cites mounting regulatory pressure as a driver of demand for fibre; whether Celwise's process meets it at scale is what the project has to show.

1. Patented process and toolingIn placeNine US grants from 2019 to 2025, per the IP database; two checked on Google Patents.
2. Industrial machine partnerPartner namedSACMI named by Celwise and by Kinetic Vision; SACMI's Interpack page does not mention Celwise.
3. Cost parity with plastic at scaleClaimNo cost or throughput data published from a production line.
4. Commercial lines at brands or convertersToo earlyNo customer, licence or commissioned line announced five months into a 24-month project.

The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.