CASCADE's Greenhouse Film Won the EIC Accelerator, Not the Market

CASCADE SAS, a small French company registered in Clamart near Paris, made optically active additives for agricultural plastic: pigments that absorb ultraviolet and green light and re-emit it as the blue and red light plants use most for photosynthesis. In the Green Deal round of the EIC Accelerator pilot, with the cut-off of 19 May 2020, it was selected with blended finance for ENLIGHT, a project to test a multi-season version of its LIGHT CASCADE film in working greenhouses and bring it to market, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies, which names CASCADE as the project's only beneficiary. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,044,976.50 towards a total cost of €3,010,211.25, from 1 November 2020 to 30 April 2023.

The trials happened. The final CORDIS report lists 53 agronomic trials and an industrial run of 300 metres of multi-season film, and says the product was "ready to be launched by end 2023". The company did not get there on its own balance sheet. The commercial court of Nanterre opened judicial liquidation on 3 December 2024 and set the date on which CASCADE stopped paying its debts at 30 September 2023, five months after the EU project ended, according to the official BODACC notice.

Where CASCADE Stands Now

CASCADE is insolvent: it is in judicial liquidation and has not been struck off. The liquidator, SCP BTSG represented by Marc Sénéchal in Neuilly-sur-Seine, filed the statement of creditors' claims with the court registry on 11 February 2026, according to a BODACC notice of April 2026; Societe.com lists the same case number, 2024J01381, and the same dates. No BODACC notice of a sale of the business or its assets appears in the company's file, and how the creditors' claims will be settled is not public.

The registers disagree on staff. The national company register, fed by INSEE, records no salaried employees at the company in 2024, according to the government's company search service, while Societe.com still shows a band of 3 to 5 employees. The company's own website is online with a 2026 copyright line; its latest linked news items date from May 2023.

The technology has a second life under a new name. LIGHT CASCADE SAS, SIREN 945 015 758, was created on 1 June 2025 with Frédéric Peilleron as chairman and is now registered in Belz in Brittany, according to the company register. Peilleron, listed as chief executive of LIGHT CASCADE, is due to present the photoconversion films at the Rencontres du Végétal in Angers on 24 November 2026. The abstract claims about 400 hectares installed in southern Europe and "commercial availability in 2026" through the film makers AGRIPOLYANE and ONDEX. Whether the new company bought CASCADE's patents or other assets from the liquidator could not be verified; no transfer is published in BODACC.

How the Film Works

The idea is to shift "a portion of the sunlight spectrum, little used by plants" into the wavelengths they use most efficiently for photosynthesis, as the project summary on CORDIS puts it. CASCADE's additives, mixed into the polyethylene as concentrated pellets called masterbatches, absorb some of that light and re-emit it at longer wavelengths. A pink "Veggie" formulation re-emits 11% more red light between 600 and 680 nanometres, and a "Berry" formulation 20% more, according to the company's 2026 presentation. Farmers change nothing in their practices, and film makers extrude the film as usual. The sales argument was price: a "nature-based solution" at about €1,000 per hectare a year, the final report says, which presents plant genetics, agrochemicals, digital farming and LEDs as complementary rather than competing technologies.

The chemistry came from outside the company. CASCADE was founded in 2012 by Peilleron as a spin-off of LPRL, a private French laboratory that had worked on "light cascade" effects for more than 20 years, according to the CORDIS summary of its first EU project; the official register describes its purpose as developing the research results of LPRL in photovoltaics and plant photosynthesis, as quoted in the liquidation notice. ENLIGHT's core work was durability: the photoactive dyes have to be shielded by encapsulation in particles to last more than one season, the final report says, and CORDIS presented the multi-season use as the difference from greenhouse films already on the market in its results article.

What the yield numbers show

CASCADE reported crop yield gains of "more than 14%" across 60 trials, plus water and nutrient savings of more than 16%, in its CORDIS report, and an average of about 10% over 33 vegetable trials in its 2026 slides. The only peer-reviewed field result found for this article is smaller. A University of Almería team, with Peilleron as a co-author, grew cucumbers in two greenhouses in autumn and winter 2020 with LIGHT CASCADE films as a double roof. Marketable yield rose by 5.3% under the blue film and 3.0% under the pink film with normal fertigation, and by 1.2% and 5.1% with 25% less fertigation, compared with a clear film, according to the paper in Acta Horticulturae. The researchers at Almería had earlier reported higher final production and 50% less downy mildew on cucumbers in their trials, according to Infoagro.

What ENLIGHT Promised, and What the Record Shows

The proposal summary on CORDIS set commercial goals: 2.5% of the target market "by 2024", revenue of €19 million and 11 customers among large greenhouse film manufacturers, with a serviceable market of €800 million. The technical goal was to test the multi-season film "in operational conditions for enabling commercialization".

The final report, covering the period to 30 April 2023, describes the technical work in detail. Encapsulation was first validated with a university partner in Lyon; CASCADE then ran a 2-litre and later a 50-litre reactor in its own lab, the latter delayed by six months because of COVID. Dispersing the particles into film needed extra research. A lab-scale multi-season film was tested in early 2022, and 300 metres of film were produced at industrial scale for trials in France and Spain. Of 53 trials, 46 ran without major problems: 20 in high tunnels for berries, 16 in Mediterranean vegetable greenhouses and 10 in northern Europe. Moving production to a 500 to 1,000-litre reactor was still "on process". The report names two customers, AGRIPOLYANE, described as Europe's second-largest film producer, and the Italian film maker PATI, and a contract with the world's second-largest maker of greenhouse thermal curtains, which it does not name. A CORDIS results article published in October 2023, after the date the court later set for the cessation of payments, says the company had "landed its launch customers".

1. Test the multi-season film in real greenhousesDelivered53 trials and 300 m of industrial film, per the final report.
2. Industrial production of encapsulated pigmentsPartly50-litre reactor; the 500 to 1,000-litre step was not completed during the project.
3. Yield gain of at least 10%PartlyCompany trials above 14%; the Almería study measured 1.2% to 5.3%.
4. Launch of the multi-season film by end 2023Not achievedPayments stopped in September 2023; a 2024 launch was announced at SIVAL, and availability is now promised for 2026.
5. 11 film-maker customers and €19M revenue by 2024Not achievedTwo customers named; liquidation in December 2024.

The project ended on schedule and the report says the six-month reactor delay was absorbed. On the technical side, ENLIGHT did what it set out to do. On the commercial side, which was the reason for an EIC Accelerator award rather than a research grant, none of the targets was met by CASCADE.

The Money

The EIC selected CASCADE for blended finance, a grant plus equity from the EIC Fund. The equity is not on the record: CASCADE does not appear on any of the 16 pages of the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked for this article, and CORDIS shows only the grant. The award has also been reported as €2.1 million, for example in a July 2021 profile by the Atlantic France development agency; CORDIS gives €2,044,976.50.

Earlier EU money was small: a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 grant in 2015 for SULTAN, a feasibility study on tunnel agriculture, according to CORDIS. In France, ADEME co-financed ECLA, a 2019 to 2022 research project with INRAE and CNRS laboratories, according to the company's partners page and the SIVAL 2024 programme. The same partners page lists Truffle Capital and Bpifrance among investors and supporters. Amounts are not public.

The public accounts are thin. The last figures that can be read are for 2015 and 2016: no revenue in either year and net losses of €24,802 and €46,255, according to INPI ratios published by the Ministry of the Economy and the national register. Accounts for 2019 to 2023 were filed with a confidentiality declaration, according to BODACC filing notices. In 2017 CASCADE absorbed MathsMarket SAS, a Paris company with net assets of €620,442.36, in a merger in which one CASCADE share was exchanged for 52 MathsMarket shares, according to the merger notice. Registered share capital rose from €50,000 at founding to €132,749 in July 2019.

Why It Mattered to Europe

ENLIGHT was funded in the Green Deal round, and its pitch fitted the EU's Farm to Fork strategy of 2020, which set targets to cut nutrient losses by at least 50% and the use of nutrients by 20% by 2030, as summarised by the Stockholm University Baltic Sea Centre. A film that raises greenhouse yields with less water and fertiliser, without energy input, serves both. The CORDIS proposal summary claimed a 10% yield gain would add more than 1 million tonnes of fruit and vegetables in the EU and save 51,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent; these are the company's projections, not measured results. The Solar Impulse Foundation listed the solution in October 2024 at the stage "Commercial Trial Small Scale", two months before liquidation.

The Verdict

Neither CASCADE's liquidator, LIGHT CASCADE SAS nor the EIC was asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.