An EIC Accelerator Detour: Modvion's Wooden Wind Turbine Towers

Wind turbines get more out of the wind the higher they stand, but steel towers hit a hard limit on the way to the site: a base wider than about 4.3 metres no longer fits under bridges and through tunnels. Modvion, a Gothenburg company registered in 2016, proposed a way around it: build the tower from laminated veneer lumber (LVL), in curved modules that travel on ordinary trucks and are glued together on site. The European Innovation Council backed the idea in the March 2020 round of the EIC Accelerator pilot with blended finance, a grant of €2,427,761.88 plus equity.

The project did what it said on its main promise. A 105 metre wooden tower carrying a 2 MW Vestas turbine went up near Skara in 2023 and was handed over to the utility Varberg Energi in February 2024. The detour is what came after. Modvion has not announced a second tower sale, and its 2025 annual report records net sales of SEK 58,304, a loss of SEK 51.0 million and a warning that more money is needed to fund the next 12 months.

Where Modvion Stands in 2026

Modvion is active. The Swedish companies register, as shown by Syna and Ratsit, lists Modvion AB as an active limited company with Maria-Lina Hedlund as external chief executive and BDO Göteborg as auditor. Ratsit dates the current articles of association to 17 May 2022 and lists no name change. The official gazette Post- och Inrikes Tidningar could not be searched for this article because its search returned a verification challenge, so announcements there were not checked; neither register page shows insolvency or liquidation.

The company's own picture of 2025 is one of retrenchment. Its annual report says Modvion reviewed its business plan "to reduce capital intensity", adapted its organisation and introduced "a more slimmed way of working" (translated). Hedlund, chief financial officer since 2020, took over as chief executive in May 2025 from co-founder Otto Lundman, who stayed on in business development. The report was drawn up on a going-concern basis, but states that the SEK 13 million of convertible notes issued in March 2026 strengthen liquidity only in the short term and that "further financing will be required" for the coming 12 months.

The prize Modvion is now chasing is industrial. On 29 April 2026 it signed a grant agreement with the European Commission for up to €39.1 million from the EU Innovation Fund, grant number 101252280, for a serial production plant for wooden towers, according to Forest Machine Magazine. Dagens PS reports that the plant is to go into the former Saab factory in Trollhättan, reach full capacity in 2031 and build about 1,500 towers in its first ten years, and that the grant covers up to 60% of costs, with the remaining 40% still to be raised in stages. The company's 2025 report confirms that this co-financing is not yet secured.

The Technology: Veneer Instead of Steel

LVL is made of thin sheets of wood veneer glued into thick panels, the same family of products as plywood but with the grain running mainly in one direction. Modvion bends and laminates it into curved shell modules in its Gothenburg factory, ships them by road and joins them into tower sections on site. The Skara tower consists of seven sections built from 28 modules, according to the project's final CORDIS report and Electrek.

The established alternatives are welded steel tubes, which dominate onshore wind, and concrete or hybrid steel-concrete towers for the tallest hub heights. Modvion's claims against them are its own: CORDIS quotes the company as saying LVL has "55% more strength than steel per weight", that its towers weigh about 30% less than steel towers, that modular towers can exceed 150 metres "at costs by up to 40% lower" and that one 150 metre wooden tower avoids 2,000 tonnes of CO2 compared with steel. The SME Instrument Phase 1 study it ran in 2019 put the strength advantage at 53% and reported a life-cycle assessment in which greenhouse gas emissions fell by "about 90 percent" under "the given conditions", per its CORDIS report. No independent cost comparison has been published, so the cost claim could not be verified. The one third-party technical check on record is a design evaluation conformity statement from TÜV SÜD for a tower for the 6.4 MW Vestas V162, handed over on 28 February 2025, according to Modvion and its 2025 annual report. A design statement is a step towards certification of a product, not a built tower.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The award appears under the company's own name in the European Commission's list of companies selected at the 20 March 2020 cut-off, as "MODVION AB", Gothenburg, project "Modvion", blended finance; no other beneficiary is listed for the project. CORDIS records grant agreement 959151, signed on 25 August 2020, running from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2023, with a total cost of €3,468,231.25. A year earlier Modvion had completed a four-month SME Instrument Phase 1 feasibility study, project 867710, with €50,000 of EU money. A CORDIS search for the company returns no other EU projects.

The objective set two goals: a first commercial installation of 150 metres near Gothenburg, used as a demonstrator, and to "reach TRL9 with our wind turbine tower & start full commercial scale operations". The final report describes a project that built what it set out to build. The team grew "from 6 to 27 dedicated employees", the company fitted out a module factory, manufacturing started in late 2022, 28 modules were produced and transported, the foundation was cast over the 2022 to 2023 winter, and the tower was stacked through the summer of 2023, with the nacelle and blades installed "shortly thereafter". CORDIS lists one deliverable, an "Operational power plant", on its results page.

1. First commercial wooden tower, 150 m total heightDelivered105 m tower with a 2 MW Vestas turbine near Skara, completed in 2023 per CORDIS; sold to Varberg Energi in February 2024 per the 2025 annual report.
2. Module factory and production methodDeliveredGothenburg factory inaugurated on 2 May 2022; still described as an R&D factory in 2025.
3. Tower in operation (TRL9)DeliveredVarberg Energi's chief executive reported "excellent" availability and "no operational issues" after one year, per Modvion, March 2025.
4. Full commercial-scale operationsNot achievedNo second tower sale announced; net sales of SEK 58,304 in 2025; series production only planned for Trollhättan, at full capacity in 2031.
5. Towers up to 40% cheaper than steelUnverifiedA company claim; no independent cost data published.

On time and on the main deliverable, the project was a success: the EU paid for a first-of-its-kind tower and the tower stands and runs. The second half of the stated aim, full commercial-scale operations, did not follow within the project or in the three years since it closed, which is why the award is rated partly delivered here.

What Modvion Has Achieved Since the Award

The commercial pipeline has been built on letters of intent. In October 2019 the developer Rabbalshede Kraft signed one for ten towers for a planned wind farm at Fägremo, worth an estimated SEK 500 to 900 million over five years "if the collaboration succeeds", according to Modvion and a CORDIS feature. By 2022 the company also cited letters of intent with Vattenfall and Varberg Energi and a cooperation agreement with Enel Green Power, per Windtech International. Of these, only Varberg Energi became a customer. The 2024 annual report says "updated letters of intent" were signed with RWE and Rabbalshede Kraft, "some targeting specific projects and tower quantities", without naming either. No binding order for the Fägremo towers has been announced.

Vestas is the relationship that matters most. The world's largest turbine maker became a shareholder through Vestas Ventures in 2021, supplied the turbine for Skara, and, according to the 2024 annual report, carried out "a technical review of a tower design for a 6MW+ turbine", after which Modvion moved on to Generation 2.0 towers "slated for series production". The same report counts 15 granted patents and 20 applications, an ISO 9001 certification and a SEK 20 million grant from the Swedish Energy Agency in April 2024 for the Generation 2 design. The 2025 report says Modvion reached validation milestones with an unnamed turbine maker that confirmed "technical readiness for a prototype".

The Money

The EIC part of the blended award was announced as €6.5 million: €2.4 million of grant and €4.1 million of equity, according to Modvion and Windtech International. Both report that the EIC Fund invested €1.5 million in January 2022. Whether the remaining €2.6 million of planned equity was ever invested is not public. The EIC Fund took part in the February 2023 round, and Modvion appears in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies with its own portfolio page, which gives no amount or date. Both annual reports name the EIC Fund among the owners.

Private money followed. In February 2023 Modvion raised SEK 125 million in an oversubscribed convertible note issue from Vestas, Almi Invest Greentech, the EIC Fund, Course Corrected VC, Symbia VC and a group from Falkenberg, according to Modvion and Silicon Canals, which put the sum at about €10.98 million. In May 2024 a SEK 67 million round brought in the Chilean forestry group CMPC, per Modvion; CMPC describes its own stake as €2 million. Since then the only new capital reported is the SEK 13 million convertible of March 2026.

Against that capital stand the losses. Between 2020 and 2025 the company lost SEK 291.6 million after financial items, according to the multi-year reviews in its 2024 and 2025 annual reports. Equity fell from SEK 69.2 million at the end of 2024 to SEK 18.2 million at the end of 2025, and the balance sheet shrank from SEK 85.7 million to SEK 31.0 million. Net sales were SEK 18.1 million in 2024, the year the Skara turbine was sold, and SEK 58,304 in 2025; the 2024 report notes that revenue "consists of cost re-invoicing which is carried out on an irregular basis". Ratsit and Syna report 2025 turnover of SEK 8.3 million because they count other operating income, which the income statement puts at SEK 8.27 million.

The team is the clearest sign of growth since the award. Average staff rose from 6 in 2020 to 33 in 2025, per the annual reports, and Syna also lists 33 employees. The trend has turned, though: the 2024 report said Modvion had 36 people, the 2025 report says 30.

Why Europe Should Care

The European Commission's European Wind Power Action Plan of October 2023 noted that the 16.3 GW installed in 2022 was "well below the 37 GW/year required" for the EU's 2030 renewables target, and set out to "maintain a healthy and competitive wind energy supply chain" and speed up financing for wind manufacturing in Europe, naming the Innovation Fund as a main route. The Commission's wind energy page reports 246 GW installed in 2025, still short of what the 2030 targets need, and six wind manufacturing grants from the Innovation Fund's IF23 call. A tower made in Europe from European wood, which travels without special road permits and can lift turbines higher, fits that agenda on supply chains and on embodied carbon. Modvion's Innovation Fund grant is the EU acting on it a second time, after the EIC.

The Verdict

Modvion has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout. Sources differ on the founding year: CORDIS, the annual reports and the register give 2016, while Silicon Canals gives 2015.