Cellumation Promised the EIC Accelerator Cheaper Conveyor Cells

A conveyor belt moves things in one direction. cellumation, a 2017 spin-off of the BIBA institute at the University of Bremen, builds conveyors out of hexagonal cells, each with three individually driven omnidirectional wheels, so that a parcel on the surface can be pushed, turned or sorted in any direction under software control. The European Commission selected the company in the 8 January 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, grant only, for a project called Celluveyor. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,233,748.13 towards a total cost of €3,191,068.75, from 1 May 2020 to 30 April 2022. cellumation GmbH is the only beneficiary of the project in the Commission's list and in CORDIS.

The proposal named three concrete objectives: "to reduce cell costs by 50%, to expand functionality to include limp plastics as well as smaller objects and to ensure that our software and the entire system are easy to use." Four and a half years after the project closed, the product is on sale and has customers that include DHL and Arvato. Neither the cost cut nor the handling of soft plastic parcels has been shown in public.

Where cellumation Stands Now

cellumation is active. The Bremen company register shows a capital increase to €84,031 and a new shareholder agreement filed on 31 July 2026, after an increase to €80,761 in February 2026 and to €61,053 in December 2024, according to North Data; the company started with €25,000 in 2017. A patent for an omnidirectional conveyor module was published in September 2026. In January 2026 the company announced that the Italian integrator Skilled Group had chosen 22 of its cv.GO rotation units for a palletising line in Poland, according to its press release, and in May 2026 it said its cv.PAL layer-forming system had won an RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award from The Robot Report in Boston, according to its announcement. The Robot Report's own 2026 RBR50 page does not list the winners without a download, so the award could not be checked independently.

The company is still run by its founders. The company page says the idea came to Hendrik Thamer and Claudio Uriarte at a robot football match, and the product page notes that omnidirectional wheels are standard equipment for many robot soccer teams. The first celluveyor patent was filed in 2012, the company says.

The Technology: A Conveyor Built From One Part

Conventional conveyor systems are mechanical: straight belts or rollers, with switches, turntables and diverters bolted on for each task, and a layout that is fixed once built. The celluveyor replaces them with a single component. Each hexagonal cell carries three omnidirectional wheels that are driven independently; cells click together like honeycomb, and a camera above the surface tracks every object so that software can move several parcels at once on different paths. The CORDIS summary claims each system "takes up to 95% less space than competing systems" and that its function "can be changed by customers' staff with a few clicks on a laptop". The 95% figure is the company's own and is repeated in trade coverage, for example by Automated Warehouse; no independent measurement of it was found.

The limits are published too. The company's FAQ recommends "that objects have a flat and solid base to ensure even power transmission", says that objects with "slightly flexible or irregular bases" must be "individually tested", and sets a minimum object size of 150 by 150 millimetres and a minimum weight of 100 grams.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

When it applied, the proposal says, cellumation had "sold nine TRL6 prototype systems in Germany, Spain and the UK". The project ran its full 24 months, from 1 May 2020 to 30 April 2022, with no extension recorded on CORDIS. The closing report for the second period says the cell hardware "has been optimized mechanically as well as electrically", that external labs "certified the reliability of the cell hardware", that an external institute confirmed the IP54 protection class, and that two systems, cv.DEPAL for depalletising and cv.BULKSORT for bulk sorting, were developed during the project. It also says the work "enabled us to sell the system profitably and at scale for all functionalities".

The report does not give the cell cost reduction it achieved, and it does not mention limp plastics or smaller objects at all. Instead it describes a new business case that came up during the project: using the celluveyor to automate parcel sorting in urban microhubs for "sustainable, green last mile deliveries". cellumation registered the wordmark "cmile" in September 2022, according to North Data, and its last mile page still promotes automated microhubs. No microhub customer or site has been announced.

1. Cut cell costs by 50%Not shownNo cost figure in the CORDIS report or any company statement found.
2. Handle limp plastics and smaller objectsNot shownThe FAQ still asks for a flat, solid base and a 150 mm minimum; a patent on conveying limp goods was published in June 2025, per North Data, but no product has been announced.
3. Easy-to-use software and systemDeliveredSoftware extended and new machines built, per CORDIS; cv.CROSSDOCK won the VDI Innovation Prize Logistics 2024.
4. New systems for more logistics functionsDeliveredcv.DEPAL and cv.BULKSORT developed in the project; cv.DEPAL is now sold and shown by Daifuku.
5. Sell profitably at scalePartlySales to named customers, but net losses of €6.07M in 2023 and €5.37M in 2024.

What cellumation Has Achieved Since the Award

The customers are real and some are named with numbers. At DHL's parcel centre in Greven, a celluveyor CROSSDOCK of 2.7 square metres has sorted 3,500 parcels an hour since August 2020, against 2,000 for the system it replaced, according to the company case study and a Packaging Journal report of March 2024 that quotes DHL's technical director. Arvato has run five celluveyor picking workstations in Gütersloh since 2019, and an Arvato manager is quoted on the case page saying each one moves over a million containers a year; the University of Bremen's up2date magazine also named DHL and Arvato as customers in February 2021.

The bigger step is a partnership with Daifuku, the Japanese materials handling group. In February 2025 the two companies presented a robotic depalletising cell built around a celluveyor at Daifuku's Bolingbrook Innovation Center near Chicago, handling up to 450 layers or 5,200 packages an hour on a 3 by 3 metre footprint, according to Automated Warehouse and cellumation's press release. A month later cellumation set up cellumation Inc. in Houston, its first US subsidiary, according to its announcement. In 2023 it signed a partnership with the Bremen trading group Melchers to sell in Asia, according to a company release. How many systems these partnerships have sold is not public.

The team has grown from six people to more than 70. The company had six people when it moved into the Bremen technology park at the start of 2019, according to up2date, and 21 that July, according to WFB Bremen. It said in 2021 that it had passed 50 employees, gave 60 in January 2023 and "over 70" in its 2025 and 2026 releases.

cellumation also kept winning public research money after the EIC project. North Data lists a federal grant of €325,730 for OptiPath, a path optimisation project for omnidirectional parcel flows, from May 2023, and €118,680 of Bremen state aid for environmental technology in March 2026. Since September 2025 it has been a partner in CAVECORE, a Horizon Europe project coordinated by the University of Bremen on testing cognitive robots, with an EU contribution of €290,272.32 for cellumation. The company is not in the EIC Fund portfolio; its award was grant only.

The Money

The filed accounts show a company that has grown on outside capital. Net losses were €1,392,967 in 2020, €3,296,436 in 2021, €815,742 in 2022, €6,074,769 in 2023 and €5,374,420 in 2024, according to North Data and Eulerpool, which agree to the euro; Eulerpool adds a 2019 loss of €1,121,850. Together the five years from 2020 to 2024 add up to €16.95 million, more than seven times the EIC grant.

Eulerpool lists equity of €0 at the end of 2022 and 2023 and €5,487,374 at the end of 2024, after a year in which the company lost €5.37 million, which points to fresh capital in 2024; the register shows a capital increase in December 2024. The underlying balance sheets could not be opened for this article, and neither revenue nor the size of any funding round has been published. Vector Conveyors, a Spanish conveyor maker, became the seed investor in December 2018, according to the company page and up2date, which says Vector also batch-produces the cells. The other shareholders could not be verified.

Why Europe Should Care

Warehouse and factory automation is one of the fields the Commission names when it explains why it funds robotics: its robotics policy page lists "transport and logistics" among the markets and calls robotics "essential for productivity and competitiveness" in the face of an ageing workforce. Parcel sorting and palletising are labour-heavy jobs where space is often the limiting factor, which is the problem cellumation sells against. The company is also a supplier, not just a user, of the automation: a European maker of conveyor hardware that a Japanese group, Daifuku, now builds into its own systems for the US market.

The Verdict

cellumation has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.