What Became of J&C Bachmann's EIC Accelerator Borehole XRF Probe

Mining companies learn what is in the ground by drilling, bagging the debris or the core and sending it to a laboratory, then waiting days or weeks for one average grade per metre or more of borehole. J&C Bachmann, a measurement technology firm from the Karlsruhe area, builds a probe that is lowered into the hole on a cable and reads the chemistry of the borehole wall with X-ray fluorescence as it goes. In the European Innovation Council's October 2019 round, the company was one of the winners of the EIC Accelerator pilot, with a grant-only award for a project called IBERIA XRF. The Commission's list names J&C Bachmann as the project's only company.

The EU contributed €921,526.38 to a €1,316,466.25 project that ran from 1 March 2020 to 28 February 2022, according to CORDIS. The company told the EU it expected to sell more than 300 probes by 2026, earn over €20 million from them and create over 50 jobs. Four and a half years after the project ended, the probe is a real product. The sales are not on any public record.

Where J&C Bachmann Stands in 2026

The company is active. Its balance sheet for 2024 was filed in March 2026, and since January 2026 it has been working on a new publicly funded probe project, according to North Data, which shows no insolvency or liquidation notice. The register entry and the company's LEI record both give its seat as Hauptstraße 90/1 in Pfinztal. The company's own legal notice names Jan Bachmann and Dr. Claus Bachmann as managing directors; North Data dates Jan Bachmann's appointment to May 2022, before which he was an authorised signatory.

In March 2026 J&C Bachmann exhibited at PDAC, the large mining convention in Toronto, in the German Pavilion, presenting the IBERIA 70, IBERIA 53 and IBERIA MPT probes. The probe line is still on the company's product page, which carries the Horizon 2020 grant number 945804. The company's three addresses tell their own story of growth before the grant: it moved its production and research site from Bad Wildbad to Karlsbad in October 2014 and has produced in Pforzheim since 2018, according to its company profile. The Commission's 2019 winner list still gave Karlsbad as its city.

The Technology: X-Ray Fluorescence Down the Hole

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is an established way to measure the elements in a material. An X-ray tube excites the atoms in a sample, each element answers with X-rays at its own energies, and a detector counts them. Hand-held XRF guns are common on drill sites, but they measure debris after it has come up. The IBERIA probe puts the tube and detector in a steel tube that is winched up and down the borehole and logs the wall continuously. J&C Bachmann's alternatives are laboratory assays of cores or cuttings and downhole tools based on neutron activation, which the company describes as costly and, because their neutron generators count as dual-use goods, hard to ship and license.

In a 2023 paper in Mining Report Glückauf, Claus Bachmann and Eduardo Yanez of the company wrote that the probe weighs about 10 kg, runs on standard four-conductor logging winches, is not classed as dangerous goods, logs at 0.5 to 4 metres a minute and can detect elements from calcium upwards, down to about 30 ppm depending on the element and the ore. Their test log of a 5 m blasthole showed average copper values "practically identical" to the laboratory's. The paper's conclusion is careful: the tool is accurate enough "to be of assistance in grade control for some types of metalliferous ores". All of these figures come from the company itself; no independent test of the probe has been published.

The idea was not new when the EIC paid for it. Jan Bachmann, Claus Bachmann and co-authors presented the "development of an XRF borehole probe for depths up to 500 m" at PDAC in March 2014, according to the slides on the company website, and the Glückauf paper cites a 2018 conference abstract on a blasthole XRF probe by Phil Hawke of Wireline Services, the Perth logging company that J&C Bachmann lists as a development partner. The EIC grant funded the last stretch from prototype to product.

What IBERIA XRF Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

IBERIA XRF came in two steps. In 2018 the company won €50,000 from the SME Instrument Phase 1 for a feasibility study, which ran from January to May 2019 and, according to its CORDIS report, covered component choice, field tests, a market study, a freedom-to-operate study and a business plan. That application forecast 250 units by 2025. The Phase 2 proposal, selected in October 2019, raised the target to more than 300 units by 2026, with over €20 million in revenue and over 50 jobs, according to the project fact sheet.

The final periodic report, for March 2021 to February 2022, says the probe window and detector alignment were optimised and validated, calibration was automated, the compact configuration with full electronics and cooling was validated, the software was improved, and "the entire probe system has been fully validated under real conditions through field tests in multiple mining locations around the world". On the commercial side it reports an expanded distribution network, finished manuals and a better website. It names no mine, customer or number of units. The CORDIS results page lists no deliverables or publications.

1. Compact XRF borehole probe, validated in the fieldDeliveredField tests reported on CORDIS; four sizes and a push-in version on the product page.
2. Commercial launch and distribution networkPartlyPartners in Australia, Canada, Chile, South Africa and Peru are listed; no named customer.
3. More than 300 units sold by 2026No evidenceNo sales figure published by the company or anyone else.
4. Over €20 million in revenueNo evidenceRevenue is not filed; total assets were €3.75M at the end of 2024.
5. Over 50 high-grade jobs in the EUUnverifiedNo staff number is published in the filed accounts.

On the technical side, the record supports the company. The project closed on its scheduled end date, the probe it describes is the one now on sale, and the company published test data in a trade journal. On the commercial side, the targets that justified the grant cannot be checked, and nothing public suggests they were met. Under the standard used for this series, a promised milestone that neither the company nor a third party has announced counts as not delivered, so the award is rated partly delivered.

What Happened After the Grant

The probe moved into a second market: mine tailings. The IBERIA MPT, or Metal Probing Tool, is pushed into tailings with the static force of cone penetration rigs rather than lowered into a drilled hole. The Glückauf paper shows a log from a field campaign at Ehrenfriedersdorf in Saxony, and GEccOTEC, a partner firm, rents the probe out with trucks and staff, according to the company's prospecting page.

That line of work is now funded by Germany. KriSTail, which started on 1 January 2026 and runs to the end of 2027, pairs J&C Bachmann with RWTH Aachen to build a high-energy XRF probe that can be pressed into fine-grained tailings to find critical raw materials such as rare earths and platinum group metals, with a target of technology readiness level 6. RWTH Aachen's project page gives a budget of about €970,000 from the federal research ministry's FONA programme; North Data lists €353,310 for J&C Bachmann's part. The company's research page also lists earlier German projects (EXTENSE, SecMinTec, Marine Plast Ident), an EIT RawMaterials project, ANCORELOG, and MOLECULE XRF, a 2021 to 2022 project under the EU's Mine.The.Gap scheme.

No private funding round, outside investor or acquisition has been announced. The EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked across all 16 pages for this article, does not include J&C Bachmann, which is consistent with a grant-only award.

The Money

As a small German GmbH, J&C Bachmann files a balance sheet but no profit and loss account, so its revenue, profit and staff are not public. The filed balance sheets, as reported by Eulerpool, show total assets rising from €1.46 million at the end of 2019 to €3.96 million at the end of 2021, the project's last full year, and €3.75 million at the end of 2024. Equity rose from €547,291 in 2019 to €684,819 in 2023, then fell by €284,363 to €400,456 in 2024, while liabilities rose from €3,178,697 to €3,330,068. Cash at the 2024 year end was €572.12. Eulerpool also publishes revenue and staff numbers for the company, but marks them as its own statistical estimates; they are not used here. These balance sheet figures come from a single aggregator and could not be checked against a second free source.

Why Europe Should Care

The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, sets a benchmark of at least 10% of the EU's annual consumption of strategic raw materials from European extraction by 2030 and requires member states to draw up national programmes for exploring geological resources. Cheaper, faster exploration and the reassessment of old tailings heaps are both part of that agenda, and J&C Bachmann's CORDIS reports pitched the probe in the same terms, as a "fully European solution" for more secure metal supply. KriSTail's focus on critical raw materials in tailings fits the Act more closely than the original IBERIA XRF pitch did.

The Verdict

J&C Bachmann has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company publications and EU project data, linked throughout.