Ecoat's EIC Accelerator Bio-Based Paint Binders, 7 Years On

About half of a paint maker's carbon footprint comes from its raw materials, and the binder, the polymer that holds the pigment and forms the film, is usually made from oil. Ecoat, a chemistry company founded in Grasse on the French Riviera in 2011, makes binders from plant oils and polyols instead. In June 2019 the European Commission picked it in the 5 June 2019 cut-off of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, for a project called Woodywood pickering. Ecoat is the only company listed for the project.

The grant was €1,249,500 towards a €1,922,500 project that ran from 1 October 2019 to 30 September 2021, according to CORDIS. The promise was a water-based paint polymer with "no VOC", a bio-based content "above 90%" and a "negative CO2 footprint", at a price for the mass market. Seven years after the award, Ecoat sells bio-based binders through distributors in Europe, North America and Asia and has raised two private rounds. Whether the specific technology the EU funded reached the market is less clear.

Where Ecoat Stands Now

Ecoat is an active company. The French register lists it as an operating SAS at its Grasse address with two open establishments, and it filed its accounts for 2024 in August 2025, according to the Annuaire des Entreprises and the BODACC legal notices. No insolvency proceedings appear in either. In June 2026 the company said its global business director Nicolas Florent would present at the Surfex coatings fair in Coventry, the latest of several 2025 and 2026 trade fair appearances on its news page.

The biggest event since the grant came in spring 2025. Ecoat announced a €21 million round, €18 million in equity from Yotta Capital, the European Circular Bioeconomy Fund (ECBF) and Starquest, plus a debt package backed by Bpifrance and support from the France 2030 plan through the ecological transition agency ADEME, according to ECBF and Silicon Canals. The money is for scaling production to 30,000 tonnes of bio-based binders at the Roussillon plant, hiring, and growth in Europe, the United States and Asia. Both sources quote the company's claim of 60% average annual growth over five years; no revenue figure was published to back it.

The Technology: Emulsions Without Surfactants

Ecoat's chemistry is the alkyd, a polyester polymer built from oil-seed derivatives and polyols, which the company says fits the principles of green chemistry because it needs few reaction steps. Alkyds traditionally come dissolved in solvents. To make them water-based, a manufacturer has to emulsify the polymer in water, which normally takes surfactants. Those surfactants stay in the dried paint film and make it more sensitive to water, the company explains on its innovation page.

The Woodywood pickering project was about the alternative: Pickering emulsions, named after the chemist S. U. Pickering, in which solid particles such as silica or clay sit at the boundary between oil and water and stabilise it instead of surfactants. CORDIS describes the approach as "a disruptive water based polymer techhnology based on pickering emulsions (using nanotechnology)". Ecoat now says it has a "surfactant free technology" that is "based on patented pickering stabilization technology". Its catalogue lists binders with up to 98% bio-based content for interior wall paints and wood coatings, sold as SECOIA, and polyurethane-modified alkyds with 40 to 70% bio-based content for more demanding uses such as metal protection, according to its product pages. The site does not say which of its products use the Pickering stabilisation, and the patent behind it could not be identified for this article.

The established alternative is the acrylic dispersion made from petrochemicals. Ecoat claims its architectural binders reach "a cost/performance ratio close to that of the best acrylic binders" with VOC content below 1 g/L. These are the company's own figures; no independent comparison could be found.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The grant agreement was signed on 11 October 2019, ten days after the official start date, and the project closed on schedule after 24 months. CORDIS holds one periodic report, for October 2020 to September 2021. It names cost and yellowing as the barriers the project had to overcome, and sets the main objective as developing "the product at a mass market price with lower VOC and equal quality".

The report's account of results is three sentences long: "The first prototype of biobased polymer has been designed and industrialized. The product in Ecoat's laboratory seems to match all the targets. The product was given to beta Customers to get their feedback. Some modification were asked and product is being recycled." In other words, at the end of the EU funding the product had reached customer trials, but the customers had asked for changes. CORDIS lists no deliverables, publications or follow-up results, and no later statement from Ecoat names the Woodywood pickering product or its launch.

1. Bio-based polymer prototype, industrialisedDeliveredStated in the final period report.
2. Surfactant-free Pickering technologyPartlyEcoat says it has patented technology; no product is named as using it.
3. Bio-based content above 90%PartlyBinders of up to 98% are on sale; the link to this project is not stated.
4. Accepted by beta customersPartlyCustomers asked for changes; rework was under way when the project ended.
5. Mass-market priceUnverifiedNo public prices or independent cost comparison.

That makes the delivery partial. The polymer was built and tested with customers, and the company that came out of the project is larger and better funded. But the grant was for a specific technology, and seven years on nothing public ties a named product on the market to it.

What Ecoat Has Achieved Since

Distribution came first. In January 2020, three months into the project, the German chemicals distributor Krahn Chemie began selling Ecoat's bio-based alkyd emulsions and alkyd-urethane dispersions in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, according to European Coatings. The deal was extended to Poland in November 2020 and to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania in August 2021, according to two PCI Magazine reports (2020, 2021). The products named were the SECOIA and INOKEM UR ranges, which still lead the catalogue.

Ecoat also joined a second EU project. From June 2021 to November 2024 it was one of 14 partners in LIGNICOAT, a Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking project coordinated by Spain's Tecnalia to make coating resins from lignin, with a 60 to 90% bio-based content. Ecoat's share was €315,413 of EU funding on €404,375 of costs, out of an EU contribution of €3,755,470.75 for the whole project, according to CORDIS.

Then came private money. In February 2023 Ecoat announced a €10 million round led by Smalt Capital and 123 IM, with Bpifrance, several banks and Région Sud Investissement, plus €1 million from 718 private investors through the crowdfunding platform Lendosphere, to add a production line at the OSIRIS chemical platform near Le Péage-de-Roussillon, according to Silicon Canals and Planète Grandes Écoles. The second source puts the staff at 32 and says the money would double production capacity. The 2025 round followed two years later.

The Accounts: Filed, but Confidential

Ecoat files its annual accounts, but those for 2020 to 2024 were all filed with a confidentiality declaration, so the income statement is not public, according to the BODACC notices. The open register data published by the French state give a net loss of €1,668,711 for 2023 and no usable revenue figure, according to the Annuaire des Entreprises, which places the company in the 20 to 49 employee band for 2024. The claimed 60% annual growth, which the company in one place describes as volume growth, cannot be checked against filed revenue.

The register does show the rounds. Registered share capital rose from €113,598.90 in July 2018 to €138,099 in July 2021 and €200,196.10 in June 2025. In June 2024 JAQH Holding, a company set up in Grasse in November 2023 whose president is Olivier Choulet, replaced him personally as Ecoat's president. In 2018 Ecoat's Roussillon production subsidiary, Ecoat Operations, was merged into it and closed.

The EIC Fund, the equity arm of the EIC, has not invested: Ecoat does not appear on any of the 16 pages of the EIC Fund portfolio list, checked in October 2026. That is expected, since 2019 SME Instrument Phase 2 awards were grants only.

Why It Matters for Europe

The coatings industry accounts for 2% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions, according to Ecoat as quoted by Silicon Canals; the figure is the company's. Replacing fossil feedstocks with renewable ones is a goal of the EU's bioeconomy strategy, and safer chemicals with fewer harmful emissions are at the heart of its Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability. Ecoat makes its binders in France from plant-based inputs, a small piece of European supply for an industry dominated by large petrochemical suppliers. The EU has backed it twice, through Woodywood pickering and LIGNICOAT, and a fund dedicated to the circular bioeconomy now holds equity.

The Verdict

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