Criaterra, the EIC Accelerator and the Promise of Kiln-Free Tiles

Ceramic tiles are fired in kilns at 1,200 degrees Celsius or more. Criaterra, a company in Holon, south of Tel Aviv, makes wall tiles from clay, stone powder, quarry waste and plant fibres at about 100 degrees, below the boiling point of water, according to Calcalist and the company's website. In the EIC Accelerator pilot cut-off of 9 October 2019 the European Commission selected its project RE-CREATE for blended finance, a grant plus equity, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names Criaterra Innovations Ltd as the project's only beneficiary. The grant was €2,123,603.13 towards a total cost of €3,033,718.75, according to CORDIS.

Seven years later the company is still registered as active, its tiles are installed in what it says are more than 150 projects, and the EIC Fund lists it among its portfolio companies. What it has not shown is the factory. A plant in Portugal was due in 2022, a Romanian factory was announced in 2025, and a "fully financed manufacturing line" was due to start in the first quarter of 2026. None of these has been publicly confirmed as producing.

Where Criaterra Stands Now

Criaterra Innovations Ltd is active in the Israeli Companies Register, incorporated on 12 May 2015, with its last annual report filed for 2025 and its seat at 14 HaMashbir Street in Holon, according to the register's open data on data.gov.il and OpenCorporates. The register records a share split and a change of the articles on 7 September 2025 and an allotment of shares on 19 October 2025, according to Startupim, which reproduces the registry's events. Who received the shares and for how much is not public. Israeli private companies do not publish their accounts, so revenue, losses and equity cannot be checked.

The Israel Innovation Authority lists the company as a winner of its Expedited Program in 2023 and of its Startup Fund in 2025, with 20 employees and "initial revenues", on its winner page. The amounts are not given. The company's website now presents it as Criaterra Earth Technologies, offering kiln-free and cement-free architectural materials made from raw earth, according to criaterra.com.

The Technology: Tiles That Are Never Fired

Conventional ceramic tiles are pressed from clay and fired in gas kilns; cement is made by heating limestone until it releases its carbon dioxide. Criaterra mixes minerals, by-products such as concrete and asphalt industry leftovers, and plant fibres with what it calls a proprietary bio-binder, and casts and cures the mix at low temperature. It calls the result "Bio-Geo Agglomerated Stone". The project report on CORDIS claims 90% energy savings, 92% lower greenhouse gas emissions for tiles and more than 80% for masonry blocks, 70% upcycled content, and six times the insulation of concrete blocks. It also says the products can be ground up and made into new Criaterra products, or returned to the soil.

These are company figures. The website says the products are validated by an environmental product declaration (EPD) and gives an embodied carbon figure of 2.89 CO₂eq/kg; the EPD itself is not linked there and could not be checked. The emission claims also vary between sources: 80% savings against concrete in Israel21c in 2023, 86% lower emissions in a talk reported by Calcalist the same year, and 92% for tiles in the CORDIS report. The tiles are rated for interior walls only. When the British distributor Parkside launched them in July 2021, it described them as suitable for internal decorative walls only, according to Hotel Designs and Specification Online. Outdoor cladding and load-bearing masonry blocks, the products with the larger carbon lever, are still described as coming next.

What RE-CREATE Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

Criaterra came to the EIC Accelerator through the SME Instrument. Its first project, RE_CREATE, was a Phase 1 feasibility study from 1 June to 30 September 2019 with an EU contribution of €50,000, according to CORDIS. The main project, RE-CREATE, was signed on 3 April 2020 and ran from 1 April 2020 to 30 June 2022. Its objective was to expand the product portfolio, industrialise production and cut costs so that the tiles could be sold at competitive prices, according to the fact sheet.

The final report says the project took the indoor wall tiles from technology readiness level 6 to 8, developed natural coatings, new sizes and shapes, and a roadmap towards masonry blocks, and that the tiles were "successfully licensed for manufacturing and sales in Europe". The licensee is not named. The report sets out a three-step industrialisation plan: optimise the pilot line in Holon, then transfer the technology to "a higher scale production line in an existing production facility" with a manufacturing partner, then replicate it in other regions. At the end of the project only the first step was complete; the second was "in process".

1. Wall tiles to market readinessDeliveredTRL8 per the CORDIS report; sold in the UK through Parkside from 2021.
2. Expanded product portfolioPartly deliveredNew tile sizes, coatings and a wet-room tile; cladding and masonry blocks not on sale.
3. European manufacturing licenceUnverifiedReported by the company; the licensee has not been named.
4. Industrial production lineNot achievedPilot line only at project end; no plant announced as producing by October 2026.

The Factory That Keeps Moving

In October 2021, Calcalist reported that Criaterra planned a European industrial plant in Portugal in 2022 and was raising a $4.6 million (€4 million) round from venture capital firms; The Algemeiner carried the same report. The tiles were by then installed in buildings of the Israeli developer Tidhar Group and in 10 Bank Hapoalim branches. In April 2023 Israel21c wrote that the company employed 18 people, had installed "over half a million units", had signed its first joint venture agreement in Europe and was "working toward its first full-scale industrial line"; Ela described a formulation from Iberian resources "for our first industrial line in Portugal".

In February 2025 the plan had changed. A company profile in the Haaretz Labels innovation supplement of Haaretz reported a European partnership for a factory in Romania with a capacity of one million square metres a year and a new plant in Israel of 100,000 square metres, both to be completed within two years, and nearly 200 installations. The EU's DeepSync platform describes a production venture set up in the Netherlands to make one million square metres of tiles in Romania, and quotes Ela on the start-up bind: "You can't attract investment without production and income, but you can't have production without investment." The current Startupim profile, last updated in August 2026, still says the tiles are "expected to reach industrial-scale production through a fully financed manufacturing line in Q1 2026". No announcement that this line, or the Portuguese or Romanian plants, has started production could be found. The partners in Portugal and Romania have never been named.

The Money

The equity side of the blended award was invested. The EIC Fund's official list of invested companies includes Criaterra Innovations Ltd under "Built Environment", and Israel21c reported in 2023 that the company had won "more than 2 million euros of grant money and 2 million euros in equity" from the EIC Fund. The EIC Fund does not publish the amount or date, so the €2 million equity figure rests on the company's account.

Beyond that, the funding record is contradictory. CB Insights lists two convertible notes totalling $1.54 million and names the EIC Fund, Third Derivative and Climate First among the investors. Startupim gives $8,892,553 in one place and $19.9 million in another on the same page, the latter including a $10 million "Series C" in June 2024 led by the Singapore family office Rumah Group, which a profile of Rumah Group lists as a backer of Criaterra. Neither Criaterra nor any investor has published an announcement of such a round, and Startupim still classifies the company as "Seed". None of these totals could be verified.

Why Europe Should Care

The CORDIS project text ties RE-CREATE to the 2019 European Green Deal, which singles out buildings as a key focus of the green transition, and notes that the production of construction materials is a large source of carbon dioxide. Cement alone causes 7.5% of global emissions, the project report says. An unfired building product made from local minerals and waste would cut kiln fuel use and the process emissions of calcination, and the company's model of local production for local use would shorten supply chains for heavy, low-value materials. Criaterra is an Israeli company with a Horizon 2020 grant, and the first industrial plants it announced, in Portugal and Romania, were all in EU member states.

The Verdict

Criaterra and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.