Counting What Brandolisio's EIC Accelerator Filter Dryer Delivered

Brandolisio SRL, a small company from Schio in the Italian province of Vicenza, was one of the winners of the first EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of the Horizon 2020 EIC pilot, on 9 January 2019, with a project called PWD, for "Pressing, Washing and Drying". The European Commission's list of selected companies names Brandolisio as the only beneficiary of the project, with no website. The grant was for a new kind of filter dryer, the closed vessel in which drug and chemical makers separate crystals from liquid, wash them and dry them. The EU paid €2,449,300 of a €3,499,000 project that ran from 1 June 2019 to 30 November 2022, according to CORDIS, which now lists the coordinator as PWD Industrial Filtration SRL. One of the project's deliverables was a report on the rebranding "from Brandolisio filtration to PWD filtration", CORDIS shows.

Seven years after selection, the company is still operating, now from Noventa Padovana near Padua. It says its technology is ready for the market. Its filed accounts show revenue of €9,000 in 2023 and €13,000 in 2024, according to aziende.it, which reproduces Registro Imprese data. No customer that has bought a commercial unit has been named.

Where the Company Stands Now

PWD Industrial Filtration S.r.l. is registered as active ("Attiva") with the Padua chamber of commerce, files accounts and reported 18 employees in 2024, according to aziende.it. Its LinkedIn page lists 23 people and 1,302 followers, and EuroQuity gives a headcount of 10 to 19. The company website gives the Noventa Padovana address and was last updated in January 2026. Italy's national state aid register shows two exemptions from social security contributions for new permanent hires dated 27 March 2026, as listed by aziende.it, a sign that the company was still hiring this year.

The largest recent event is public money. On 15 April 2025 Italy's research ministry (MUR) granted the company €3,923,801 under a joint MUR and economic development ministry decree, no. 327 of 29 March 2022, according to the state aid register entries reproduced by aziende.it. In February 2025 there was also a €96,000 entry under Italy's state guarantee fund for small businesses. In total the register lists 15 aid measures worth €5,285,582 between 2021 and 2026; the page itemises ten of them. What the ministry grant pays for has not been announced by the company or the ministry. A page on the company's website called I-TERAPI, created in November 2025, introduces a computer vision researcher from the University of Udine and a protein process scientist, but the rest of the page is placeholder text.

The company also received debt financing of $737,000 from Invitalia and EISMEA, announced in September 2022, according to VCBacked; that figure could not be confirmed from a second source. No equity round, outside investor or EIC Fund stake is public; the company does not appear in the EIC Fund portfolio, and the 2019 SME Instrument Phase 2 rounds were grant only.

The Technology: Pressing Instead of Stirring

Drug ingredients and fine chemicals usually leave the reactor as a slurry of crystals in solvent. Most plants isolate them in a Nutsche filter dryer, a closed vessel with a filter floor and a stirring arm, or in a centrifuge, designs that date from the 1970s and 1980s and are no longer patent-protected, according to Il Progettista Industriale. The PWD unit has no agitator. It presses thin layers of the crystal cake mechanically at up to 6 bar, heats only the plates that touch the cake, and dries and discharges the dry part of the cake at the same time, according to the project's final report on CORDIS. Modules can be added or removed to change capacity, the report says, and the company describes a modular set of units as a route to semi-continuous production on its website.

The claimed benefits are large and come only from the company. The final EU report says tests showed processing times cut by more than 90%, solvent use by more than 60%, industrial gas use by more than 95% and energy use by more than 90%, with no loss of product. A November 2023 blog post on the company website repeats similar figures and puts the solvent saving at more than 65%. Its LinkedIn profile now speaks of "7 to 10x higher productivity", 50 to 75% less energy and 50 to 60% less solvent, figures that it says testing "indicated the potential" for. No independent test results or peer-reviewed papers on the technology could be found, and the CORDIS results page lists no publications.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

The proposal promised to replicate the results of the PWD prototype "on the industrial/commercial level" in a project "expected to last 24 months", and to begin commercial exploitation "within 3-6 months from the completion of the project", according to the CORDIS objective. It cited commercial interest from Bayer and Lanxess. The grant agreement was signed on 13 May 2019. The project ended on 30 November 2022, 42 months after it started, so it ran 18 months longer than planned. Neither Bayer nor Lanxess is mentioned in the final report, and no later statement from either company about the technology could be found.

The final report, for June 2021 to November 2022, says all project objectives were "fully achieved": the technology reached technology readiness level 8, it was tested with the University of Bologna, then with four "friendly users" on six real pharmaceutical products, and it received the PED and ATEX certifications needed to sell pressure equipment for explosive atmospheres. The report says 20 more potential clients were planning tests and 40 more were in discussions, and that applications for two trademarks and four patents would be filed with the European Patent Office in the first half of 2023. It gave the commercial launch date as the second quarter of 2023. The test users are not named in the report.

The development part is backed by more than the company's own account. In February 2022 Ecor International, a Schio engineering firm, announced its partnership with PWD on the new filter, as reported by Il Nordest; its pharma unit head said Ecor had supported the production and assembly of the laboratory and pilot filters, and the filter was described as still being tested at industrial level with potential users, according to Il Progettista Industriale. The commercial part is not. In May 2022 the trade magazine Industry 5.0 reported that production and commercialisation were planned for the second and third four-month periods of 2022, a target that the final EU report later moved to the second quarter of 2023. The November 2023 blog post still said production and commercialisation were planned for "summer", without a year, and the company's revenue of €9,000 in 2023 and €13,000 in 2024 does not show the sale of an industrial filter dryer.

1. Industrial-scale filter dryer built and testedDeliveredLab and pilot units built with Ecor International; four test users per the final report.
2. Project finished in 24 monthsMissedRan 42 months, to November 2022.
3. Commercial launch, Q2 2023Not achievedNo launch, sale or customer announced; 2024 revenue €13,000.
4. Four new patents and two trademarks filed with the EPONot verifiedNo filing could be found; patent databases could not be searched in full.
5. PED and ATEX certificationNot verifiedStated in the final report only.

The Money

The company's filed accounts are thin. The two most recent years shown by aziende.it give revenue of €9,000 in 2023 and €13,000 in 2024, a loss of €88,020 in 2024 and share capital of €100,000. The 2023 result is shown as €40,932 without a sign or further detail, and could not be checked against the filed balance sheet. A second business directory, informazione-aziende.it, places 2024 revenue below €300,000 and records an increase in share capital. Revenue of €13,000 with 18 employees means the company is funded by grants and other money, not by sales.

Why Europe Should Care

Europe depends on outside suppliers for many active pharmaceutical ingredients, and the Commission's Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe and the Critical Medicines Act both aim to strengthen the supply and production of critical medicines and their ingredients within the EU. Making ingredient plants cheaper and cleaner to run is one way to keep that production in Europe, and isolation and drying is a slow, solvent-heavy step. A filter dryer that cut solvent and energy use as much as PWD claims would matter for costs and emissions. That case rests on unpublished tests.

The Verdict

PWD Industrial Filtration has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.