FUTTEC, the EIC Accelerator and the Promise of Microwaved Asphalt

FUTTEC a.s., a Prague company, repairs potholes by heating the asphalt around them with microwaves, so that fresh hot mix fuses with the old road surface instead of leaving a seam where water can seep in and freeze. In the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 3 April 2019, the European Commission picked its project RADARR 2 (Rapid and Durable Asphalt Road Repairs 2) for a grant, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names FUTTEC as the only company on the project. The EU contribution was €1,803,375 towards a total cost of €2,576,250, for a project that ran from 1 October 2019 to 31 March 2022, according to CORDIS. The SME Instrument was the forerunner of today's EIC Accelerator, and this round was grant only.

Seven years on, FUTTEC is trading and showing its machines abroad. Its FT-3 "microwave road worker" is used by Prague's road authority TSK and by the Czech Road and Motorway Directorate (ŘSD), and the company demonstrated it in Bern in June 2026. What has not appeared is the FT4, the machine the EU project actually built: a prototype with more than five times the power of the FT-3, which a state-owned arms and engineering firm agreed in 2021 to put into series production.

Where FUTTEC Stands Now

The Czech commercial register lists FUTTEC a.s. as an active joint-stock company with no insolvency entry, seated at V parku in Prague-Chodov since July 2024. It filed its 2025 accounts in July 2026, and in August 2026 the register recorded a board change made at its general meeting of 28 May 2026. The register shows that the company was set up in 2007 as NIGTINGALE a.s., renamed NANOCAR a.s. in 2009 and FUTTEC a.s. in March 2011; the company itself gives 2011 as its founding year on its website.

Dan Ťok, described on the company's team page as a former long-serving Czech transport minister, has been vice-chairman of the board since 25 May 2022, according to the register and the FUTTEC website. CORDIS quotes him as "vice-chairman of FUTTEC" and as RADARR 2 project coordinator in its results summary of September 2022. The 2025 accounts are signed by Jiří Rušikvas as chairman.

The company is now selling abroad. In late June 2026 it demonstrated a repair to about 25 road maintenance specialists at the technical services yard of the city of Bern, together with the Swiss firm Weibel and with the Czech ambassador present, after demonstrations in the Netherlands, Romania, Italy, Hungary and Austria since February 2026, according to the Czech Embassy in Bern and BusinessInfo.cz. Ireland and Poland were named as the next stops. Its website announced a stand at the Asphaltica fair in Bologna on 7 to 10 October 2026. No foreign customer contract has been announced.

The Technology: Heating the Edge, Not Just the Patch

A conventional cold or hot patch leaves a joint between old and new asphalt. Water enters the joint, freezes, and the hole reopens. FUTTEC's machine heats the surrounding road with microwaves while a separate microwave oven heats the repair mix to the same temperature, so the two can be compacted into one layer. A patented spray applied to the damaged spot helps the surface absorb the energy, according to BusinessInfo.cz in November 2019, which described the FT3 heating the surrounding asphalt to about 120 °C, a two-person crew finishing a repair within an hour of arrival, no milling, and work possible below freezing. The FT3 handled defects up to 80 by 60 cm. The company says the method was developed with the Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Brno University of Technology.

The advantages are the company's own claims. Independent field data on how long its repairs last compared with ordinary patches could not be found. FUTTEC says on its website that microwave repairs are recommended by the Czech Ministry of Transport in technical conditions TP 264/2023 and that it holds a European patent with unitary effect; neither document was checked for this article. TSK's investment director Jiří Hájek said in 2023 that the technology "has proven that, used in a targeted and expert way, it makes sense economically and functionally", according to Auto-mania.cz (translated).

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

RADARR 2 followed a €50,000 Phase 1 feasibility study, RADARR, which ran from June to November 2017 with a total cost of €71,429, according to CORDIS. The company's website timeline dates the €1.8 million grant to 2017; CORDIS shows the 2017 grant was the €50,000 study and the €1.8 million agreement was signed on 4 October 2019. A 2023 company press release reprinted by BusinessInfo.cz rounded the grant to "almost two million euros".

The grant agreement promised a "tested microwave machine FT3 ready for commercialization", adapted to customers' needs. The project's final periodic report describes a bigger change: the team redesigned the machine as the FT4, with a microwave applicator of more than five times the power, an electric drive, optical and thermal cameras and software to automate the heating. The report says the FT4 should heat asphalt to 145 °C to a depth of 6 cm in under 10 minutes even below 0 °C, so that a pothole could be repaired in 20 minutes. It lists as results an FT4 prototype, a commercialisation strategy with identified production, service and distribution partners, a European patent application, a PCT application and a granted Czech patent. The project closed on its scheduled end date, 31 March 2022.

The production partner was named a year earlier. In April 2021 FUTTEC signed an agreement with the state enterprise VOP CZ, which was to assemble the FT4 prototype, then manufacture, service and sell the FT4 fleet in Czechia and abroad; FUTTEC said the first FT4 machines could be working on Czech roads in autumn 2021, according to BusinessInfo.cz and eStav.cz. No later report of an FT4 at work or of VOP CZ series production could be found. The CORDIS summary of 2022 said the next-generation prototype was "in the final stage of testing". Today the company sells the FT-3 and an FF-9 oven; its own timeline records small-series production of the FT-3 and FF-9 from 2022 and improved versions in 2023, and its research page now describes an autonomous FT-5 with three times more power. Its website still gives repair times of up to 60 minutes, not the 20 minutes the project aimed for.

1. Machine ready for commercialisationDeliveredFT-3 in small-series production from 2022, used by TSK and ŘSD.
2. FT4 with five times the powerPrototype onlyBuilt in the project, never launched.
3. Series production with VOP CZNot achievedNo production announced since April 2021.
4. 20-minute repairNot shownWebsite still says within 60 minutes.
5. PatentsDeliveredCzech patent granted, EP and PCT filed (CORDIS).
6. Foreign marketsStarted lateDemos in six countries in 2026, no contract public.

What It Has Achieved Since

The home customers are real. TSK, which manages Prague's roads, used FUTTEC to repair potholes on the Barrandov Bridge before its reconstruction and had signed a winter maintenance agreement with the company by December 2023, according to České novinky and Auto-mania.cz. In December 2025 the regional road company of the Hradec Králové region began testing the microwave repairs together with a pilot of AI-based detection of road defects, according to BusinessInfo.cz. In 2023 FUTTEC was the only Czech company among 25 finalists, out of 548 entries from 58 countries, of the WIPO Global Awards.

How many repairs it has done is less clear. In May 2023 CzechCrunch reported more than 1,000 pothole repairs with the FT3 and a price per machine "in the lower single millions of crowns". The counter on the FUTTEC homepage now reads 11,250 repairs since 2020, and a quote there from TSK's vice-chairman Josef Richtr speaks of "thousands" of repairs in Prague. TSK's own repair totals could not be found, so the company figure cannot be checked. The website also says the FF-9 oven set can be bought or rented through the DEK rental network.

Besides the EIC grant, FUTTEC lists Czech Operational Programme grants: three proof-of-concept projects and one applied research project in 2020 and 2021, and two innovation vouchers in 2024, including one for a life-cycle assessment of the FT3, on its research page. In 2023 it said it was applying for an EIC Accelerator grant again; no second EIC award is public. Its 2019 round offered no equity, FUTTEC could not be found in the EIC Fund portfolio, and no outside equity investor has been reported.

The Money

FUTTEC a.s. files full Czech accounts, published in the register's collection of documents. They show a company that lived on grants during the EIC project and on sales afterwards. Sales were below CZK 3.4 million a year from 2019 to 2022, while other operating income reached CZK 26.3 million in 2020 and CZK 27.5 million in 2021. The accounts do not say how much of that was the EU grant. In 2025, other operating income of CZK 9.7 million included CZK 9.1 million of subsidies. No income statement was filed for 2025, so that year's figures come from the notes.

Sales then rose to CZK 49.4 million in 2024 and CZK 43.3 million in 2025. The 2025 notes show most of it came from inside the group: CZK 19.4 million for monitoring services to the group and CZK 17.6 million in licence fees for machines sold within the group. External sales of the subsidiaries that carry out repairs, such as FUTTEC REPAIRS s.r.o., are not shown in the parent's accounts, and no consolidated figures are filed. The figures also move between filings: the 2023 accounts were filed twice, in April and June 2024, with different revenue, and the 2025 accounts restate the 2024 profit as CZK 1.84 million, against CZK 2.27 million in the 2024 accounts.

The balance sheet has grown on borrowed money. At the end of 2025 total assets were CZK 48.6 million against equity of CZK 4.9 million. Of CZK 43.6 million in liabilities, CZK 26.7 million was owed to its own subsidiaries and CZK 10.1 million to Jiří Rušikvas as shareholder; the bank account was overdrawn by CZK 200,000. Assets included CZK 32.1 million of estimated receivables, mostly a claim on its subsidiaries for monitoring services. Additions to fixed assets in 2025 were mainly two cars, a Mercedes EQS 450 for CZK 1.65 million and a BMW X3 for CZK 0.4 million, and the services bill included CZK 2.76 million for business development and CZK 2.9 million for marketing. The board stated that the company would continue as a going concern.

Why Europe Should Care

Road maintenance is a safety question as well as a budget one. The EU's Road Safety Policy Framework 2021-2030 aims to halve road deaths and serious injuries by 2030 and calls for safer infrastructure. Colder regions of northern and eastern Europe are far more prone to potholes, Dan Ťok told CORDIS in 2024, and that is where winter halts conventional hot patching. A repair that works in frost, needs no milling and leaves no waste would serve those goals, and the machine is designed and built in Czechia. Whether the repairs actually last longer than conventional ones has not been published by any road authority.

The Verdict

FUTTEC and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article. It is based on public records and published statements, linked throughout.