Nordic Bio-Graphite and the EIC Accelerator: Forest-Waste Graphite

Synthetic graphite is made by heating carbon to around 3,000°C, and EIT RawMaterials puts China's share of world graphite production at nearly 80%. Nordic Bio-Graphite, a Stockholm company built on research at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, says it can make the same material from forestry residues at about 1,600°C, using a catalyst, and reach a purity above 99.95%. Its website now calls the company Grafir.

The EIC Accelerator selected its project, Fossil-Free Graphite, at the March 2025 cut-off for blended finance. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,936,557.36 under a grant agreement signed on 2 October 2025, for a project running from 1 December 2025 to 30 November 2027. The goal is to take the process from technology readiness level 6 to 8 by building a pilot plant and validating the graphite in batteries and industrial uses. Eleven months into the project, the record can show where the company stands, not whether it will succeed.

How the process works

According to the EIT RawMaterials announcement of 16 January 2026, the company converts forestry residues into biochar and then into synthetic graphite through a catalyst-assisted heat treatment, where conventional synthetic graphite needs about 3,000°C. The company website gives its own temperature as about 1,600°C, names sawdust as one feedstock and claims about 70% less energy. The CORDIS summary adds a second claim: 95% fewer chemicals than conventional methods. Both figures come from the company; no independent measurement of them is public.

The science behind the company is documented. A KTH doctoral thesis by Ziyi Shi, defended on 10 April 2026 and supervised by Weihong Yang, describes catalytic graphitisation of biochar, a molten metal pool that separates the graphite from the catalyst, semi-continuous production at pilot scale with minimal residual metal, and bio-graphite anodes that cycled stably in half-cell and full-cell tests. The thesis page does not mention the company; the company's about page lists Ziyi Shi as its lead materials specialist and Weihong Yang as its founder and CTO.

On carbon, the company website states production emissions of 0.69 kg of CO₂ equivalent per kilogram of graphite and a net cradle-to-gate figure of minus 3 kg, from an internal life cycle assessment it says was verified by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute. The verification report itself is not published.

Who it is, and when it started

The founding date depends on the source. Statistics Sweden data shown by Funnelfeedr gives 2013 for the registered company, org. no. 556923-2852, an active aktiebolag with one employee and revenue of 0 SEK, at Norrsken House in Stockholm. The Hub gives 2023, and the Preqin profile gives 2024. The company's own timeline puts the business launch in mid-2024 after a production breakthrough in 2022 and independent validation in 2023. The Bolagsverket-based registers Allabolag and Ratsit could not be read for this article, so no filed accounts, former names or registration date were checked.

The rename is also only partly on the record. The company website states that "Nordic Bio-Graphite is now Grafir" and dates the rebrand to 2026, and the old domain redirects there. CORDIS and the Statistics Sweden data still carry the name Nordic Bio-Graphite AB; whether the registered company name has changed could not be verified.

The money around the grant

EIT RawMaterials announced a €0.6 million investment on 16 January 2026, to validate market demand and plan the company's first pilot plant, and the EIT repeated the €600,000 figure on 28 January 2026. Both say this early investment helped the company secure further funding from the EIC Accelerator and from the Swedish impact investor Norrsken, with support from what the announcement calls the "European Innovation Fund (EIF)". The investor is named differently across sources: the company lists Norrsken Evolve, while Preqin names Norrsken VC and records a €600,000 round in December 2025 from EIT RawMaterials, Norrsken VC and the European Investment Fund. No separate amount for the Norrsken investment is public.

The award was blended finance, which pairs the grant with a possible equity investment by the EIC Fund. CORDIS records only the grant. The EIC Fund's portfolio site has a page at a Nordic Bio-Graphite address, but it returned an access-denied notice when checked on 28 October 2026, and no equity amount or date has been announced by the company or the EIC.

The company has public recognition alongside the money. The Startup 4 Climate competition lists it among its 2024 winners, which EIT RawMaterials also reports. The company says its research was named on the IVA 100 list in 2024 and that Jakob Way was listed by MIT Technology Review among Europe's innovators under 35; those two claims were not checked against the lists themselves.

What the EIC project promised

The CORDIS objective is a pilot plant that moves the process to TRL 8, validation in batteries and industrial applications, and preparation for commercial production. The company website shows a Stockholm pilot plant whose photo caption says it is "currently under construction", while the same site's timeline lists "pilot plant launch" for 2026. No capacity figure for the plant is published. The site says the graphite has been tested for lithium-ion battery anodes and for electric arc furnace electrodes and that the company works with battery makers, steel producers and research organisations, but it names none of them. Searches for an offtake or supply agreement found none announced.

1. Pilot plant reaching TRL 8Under constructionShown as under construction on the company's about page; no capacity or start date published.
2. Validation in batteriesLab data onlyStable half-cell and full-cell cycling in the KTH thesis; no customer test results published.
3. Validation in industrial usesClaimThe company says it tested electric arc furnace electrodes; no partner named.
4. 70% less energy, 95% fewer chemicalsClaimCompany figures in CORDIS and on its website; no independent data.

Why the EU funds graphite

EIT RawMaterials and chemeurope.com both report that the EU has designated graphite a critical and strategic raw material, and EIT RawMaterials' chief executive, Bernd Schäfer, said in the announcement that China controls nearly 80% of global production. The European Commission's Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks of 10% of EU consumption from EU extraction, 40% from EU processing and 25% from recycling, and no more than 65% of any strategic raw material from a single third country. The EIC funded the project under its 2025 challenge for the development and upscaling of advanced materials along the value chain, according to CORDIS.

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