Alleima has been awarded €17.4 million in EU Innovation Fund support for next-generation clean energy technology

Alleima, a Swedish developer of high value-added products in advanced stainless steels as well as products for industrial heating secured €17.4 million from the EU Innovation Fund call 2024 for its HySurfCoat project. The extensive project will establish a first-of-its-kind factory for next-generation steel-based interconnects used in solid oxide electrolysers and fuel cells. Spinverse supported Alleima in preparing the successful funding proposal and in the subsequent grant agreement preparation (GAP) process.

Scaling up advanced interconnect production

The ten-year HySurfCoat project aims to create a dedicated production facility in Sandviken, Sweden, for coated stainless-steel strip. This is used to manufacture interconnects for solid oxide electrolysers and solid oxide fuel cells. As opposed to conventional production routes, the project will pre-coat stainless-steel strip in a continuous, high-speed coil-to-coil process before the material is formed into individual interconnects.

The highly automated process uses physical vapour deposition to apply a dual coating and combines it with real-time inspection and quality control. Customers will receive custom-coated steel strip that is ready for forming, reducing the need to handle individual plates or operate a complex coating process within their own value chains. Nanometre-level quality control is designed to ensure consistent performance at industrial volumes.

Supporting hydrogen deployment and European competitiveness

By enabling cost-efficient production at scale, HySurfCoat is expected to lower stack costs for electrolysers and fuel cells and support the deployment of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen. The project is expected to achieve 100% relative greenhouse gas emission avoidance compared with the reference scenario, corresponding to 3.4 million tonnes of avoided CO2 equivalent during its first ten years of operation.

The investment will strengthen European manufacturing capacity for key components used in clean energy technologies and contribute to a more competitive green technology industry. The highly digitalised production facility in Sandviken will also support the scale up.

Spinverse support from successful project proposal to grant agreement

Spinverse funding experts supported Alleima in preparing the company’s Innovation Fund proposal and continues the collaboration during the Grant Agreement Preparation phase. The work helped translate the project’s technical ambition, climate impact and implementation plan into a strong funding application and supported the project team in progressing towards the grant agreement.

Senior Manager Henrik Fintling from Alleima worked closely with Spinverse during the intense proposal preparation process. He comments the collaboration as follows: 

Spinverse supported us well with our application where their experience in EU administration was to a significant advantage. Moreover, their consultants were very professional with sufficient dialogue and with great competences.

The final investment decision (FID) will be taken by Alleima during mid-2028 at the earliest. The HySurfCoat project clearly demonstrates how industrial innovation can accelerate decarbonisation while building European manufacturing capacity for technologies central to the clean energy transition.

Photo credit: Alleima

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