Eco-Tech Ceram: EIC Accelerator Heat Storage, and What Came Next

Industrial kilns blow hot air out of their chimneys around the clock, and most of that heat is never used again. Eco-Tech Ceram, a French company spun out of thesis work at the CNRS solar energy laboratory PROMES, builds a box of ceramic blocks that soaks up this waste heat and gives it back when a factory needs it. In June 2019 the European Commission selected its EcoStock project in the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the grant-only round of the Horizon 2020 EIC pilot that preceded the EIC Accelerator, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names Eco-Tech Ceram of Perpignan as the project's only company.

The EU contributed €1,385,125 to a project costing €1,978,750, which ran from 1 November 2019 to 30 April 2023, according to CORDIS. Its goal was to show that the company's storage unit, until then proven only on a stop-start batch kiln, could also recover heat from the continuous tunnel kilns used by the largest ceramics plants. The grant application had budgeted 24 months; the project took 42.

Where Eco-Tech Ceram Stands Now

Eco-Tech Ceram is active and growing. The French register lists it as an active company with Antoine Meffre as president, according to the Annuaire des Entreprises. In February 2025 its shareholders approved a cash capital increase that lifted share capital from €576,638 to €1,032,344, according to a legal notice reproduced by Societe.com and the capital history on North Data. That round was a €16 million Series B led by the Fonds Révolution Environnementale et Solidaire, managed by Crédit Mutuel Impact, alongside Bpifrance's PSIM fund, which Crédit Mutuel announced in June 2025. CFNews dates the transaction to 24 February 2025. In the release, Meffre set the goal of making the company "the world leader in heat storage by 2030".

In 2026 the company bought DIVINA, a boilermaker in Albi that now builds the Eco-Stock units, according to the company's team page. The register confirms that Eco-Tech Ceram is now president of the operating company of the DIVINA works, founded in 1964, per the Annuaire des Entreprises. A second financing vehicle, ETC Invest 2, was registered at the Balma address on 17 March 2026 with Eco-Tech Ceram as president, according to the same register. In an interview with Techniques de l'Ingénieur published on 29 April 2026, Meffre said the group expected about 35 staff by 2027, around 20 at Eco-Tech Ceram and about 12 at the acquired metalworks.

How a Box of Ceramic Blocks Stores Kiln Heat

An Eco-Stock is a packed bed of ceramic blocks in an insulated steel vessel. Hot exhaust air from a kiln is blown through it until the ceramic is charged; later, cooler air is blown back through and leaves hot, ready to heat a dryer or a burner's combustion air. Heat exchangers, the usual alternative, are limited to temperatures below 600 °C and must use the heat at once because they cannot store it, the project coordinator Guilhem Dejean told CORDIS. Storage lets a plant shift heat in time, and since the EcoStock project the company also adds electric heaters, so a unit can be charged with cheap off-peak electricity as well as with waste heat.

The original pitch also rested on the storage material: the company's 2016 Phase 1 project described ceramics made from industrial waste such as coal fly ash, according to CORDIS, and the 2019 project title promised "mobile" storage "based on recycled ceramics". Eco-Tech Ceram's current product page describes ceramic blocks "with no rare metals" and capacities of 1 to 30 MWh per installation, but does not say whether the blocks are still made from recycled waste, and the installed units are fixed on site. Whether either feature survived could not be verified.

What the EIC Grant Paid For, and How It Went

Eco-Tech Ceram had already installed an Eco-Stock on a batch kiln at a ceramic factory in 2019, according to the project's final report on CORDIS; the company's references page names that site as Tegulys, a tile and brick maker. The EIC project was meant to take the same system to tunnel kilns. The report says finding an industrial partner with a suitable kiln took "extensive research" and that the work was slowed by the COVID crisis, which cut kiln activity and stopped travel. The partner became Villeroy & Boch's ceramics plant at Valence d'Agen, with a 150-metre tunnel kiln. The team studied 24 configurations and, because tunnel-kiln exhaust is cooler, added a power-to-heat stage to raise the recovered air to 600 °C before storing it.

The build was financed partly outside the EU grant. A joint announcement of 6 September 2022 said Eco-Tech Ceram had signed a turnkey contract with the energy services firm GreenFlex, under a new Occitanie leasing scheme called FITEEO, with €400,000 from the Occitanie region and €800,000 from the French energy agency ADEME; it targeted 5.5 GWh of annual energy savings and 1,000 tonnes of CO2 avoided per year across new dryers and heat recovery. Eco-Tech Ceram's own references page says the "majority of CAPEX" was subsidised by Horizon 2020. The two accounts cannot both be fully right, and the actual split is not public.

The unit went into service in October 2023, six months after the EU project closed, according to Solarthermal World, which put its capacity at 2.3 MWh and its savings at 3,000 MWh a year, 10% of the site's energy needs. The company's references page gives the same 3,000 MWh and quotes the plant director, Laurent Santarelli, saying the site would cut gas use by 42% compared with 2021, and that "without these savings, the site would be threatened by rising gas prices."

The final report closed with commercial promises: Villeroy & Boch had asked for all its burners to be equipped, which "will give rise to a commercial contract", and the industrial partner would promote the system on all its European sites. Neither the follow-on contract nor any second Villeroy & Boch site has been announced by either company. The proposal summary on CORDIS spoke of 50,000 industrial sites and said "thousands of EcoStock units could be sold"; three years after the project ended, the company lists eight installations in service.

1. Eco-Stock on a continuous tunnel kilnDeliveredVilleroy & Boch, Valence d'Agen, in service October 2023 (CORDIS, Solarthermal World).
2. Project in 24 monthsLateRan 42 months, to April 2023; the unit started after the project ended.
3. ESCO-style financing for customersDeliveredETC Invest set up in 2021; Wienerberger buys heat under a 10-year contract.
4. Contract to equip all Villeroy & Boch burnersNot announcedNo contract or second site made public.
5. Mobile units from recycled ceramicsUnverifiedCurrent materials do not mention recycled feedstock or mobility.
6. Thousands of units soldMissed so farEight installations in service in 2026.

Customers and Money Since the Grant

The third commercial Eco-Stock site is Wienerberger's brick plant at Pontigny, south of Paris, where two units of 2.3 MWh each take heat from six kilns to the dryers, commissioned in spring 2024 according to Solarthermal World. The company's references page says ETC Invest paid for the installation in exchange for selling heat at a fixed price for 10 years. The same page lists studies or projects for Aubert & Duval, ThyssenKrupp and ArcelorMittal, without saying which are built; the April 2026 interview in Techniques de l'Ingénieur calls the ArcelorMittal and ThyssenKrupp work demonstration projects.

The private money came in two steps. In September 2021 the company raised €5 million and set up ETC Invest, a third-party financing company with €30 million of capacity. Le Monde du Droit names the PSIM fund of Bpifrance, RGreen Invest, Qair Innovation, ARIS and Johes as investors in the company, with ADEME Investissement joining them in ETC Invest only; Nordic9 lists ADEME Investissement among the investors in the €5 million round itself. The register shows ETC Invest incorporated on 20 July 2021. The Series B followed in 2025.

Filed accounts show the cost of that growth. The company lost €790,983 in 2021, according to the Annuaire des Entreprises, then €2.67 million in 2022 and €460,600 in 2023, according to accounts summarised by Societe.com, which also shows cash falling from €5.69 million to €2.13 million and long-term debt rising from €3.66 million to €5.77 million over 2023. Revenue is not disclosed in those summaries; Solarthermal World reported turnover of €3.8 million for 2023, a figure no second source confirms. Accounts after 2023 are not available free of charge.

Why It Matters for Europe

The case for the technology is gas. Heavy industry loses 20 to 40% of the energy it consumes as waste heat, the project's CORDIS objective says, and every megawatt-hour recovered is one that a kiln does not have to burn. After 2022 the EU set out in REPowerEU to cut its dependence on Russian gas, and the Villeroy & Boch plant director's warning about gas prices shows why a ceramics plant in rural France cares. The final report adds that the power-to-heat and storage system can be built entirely from European components. The storage also lets factories soak up cheap off-peak or renewable electricity, which is how the company now sells it: Meffre told Techniques de l'Ingénieur that "it must be cheaper than gas", and the company advertises heat from €25 per MWh under 10 to 12 year contracts.

The Verdict

Eco-Tech Ceram, Villeroy & Boch and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.