Where ROSI's EIC Accelerator Solar Panel Recycling Stands in 2026

"Silver represents less than 0.1% of the components of a solar module but it constitutes a big portion of its value," Yun Luo, ROSI's president, told pv magazine in 2022. ROSI, a Grenoble start-up whose name stands for "Return of Silicon", according to the European Investment Bank, says it can separate the silver and the silicon cleanly and sell both back to industry. In the European Commission's list of Green Deal projects selected at the 19 May 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, "ROSI SAS" appears alone with the project Ramp-PV and "blended finance", a grant plus EIC equity. No other company is listed for the project.

The grant was small by EIC standards: €700,000 towards a €1,003,500 project that ran from 1 November 2020 to 31 October 2022, according to CORDIS. Six years after selection ROSI is operating: it runs a recycling plant at Saint-Honoré in the Isère Alps, raised over €20 million in April 2026 and is planning sites in Spain and Germany. The one figure a reader would expect from a recycler, how many tonnes of panels it has processed, has not been published by the company or by anyone else.

What ROSI Does Now

Both ROSI companies are active in the French register, with no insolvency notice, according to the government's company directory and the BODACC legal notices, which show 2025 accounts filed in July 2026 and a capital increase published in May 2026. The parent, ROSI SAS, moved its seat from Grenoble to Seyssins in October 2024. The plant is run by a subsidiary, ROSI Alpes SAS, created in July 2021 as Centre d'Excellence de Grenoble and renamed in May 2023, with ROSI SAS as its president.

On 29 April 2026 ROSI announced "over €20 million in total funding", combining a Series B with French and European grants, according to InnoEnergy, one of the investors, and ROSI itself. Both name InnoEnergy, the shipping group CMA CGM, the EIC and the Spanish family office G3T, alongside Finadvice and Swiss and Polish family offices. The sources disagree on the detail: pv magazine calls the whole sum a Series B of more than €20 million and describes InnoEnergy, CMA CGM, the EIC and G3T as existing backers, while ROSI says the total includes grants. The equity share has not been disclosed.

The money is meant for a second plant in Teruel, Spain, with 10,000 tonnes a year of capacity, part of an EU Innovation Fund project called INSPIRE-PV. pv magazine reports that construction will start only after studies, specifications and permits are complete. In June 2026 ROSI also announced ROSI@RHE, a plant planned at Evonik's site in Rheinfelden, Germany, for which the agreement with Evonik was still awaiting "finalization"; no capacity or date was given, and no independent report of the German project could be found.

The Technology: Taking the Silver Off Intact

ROSI's process, as described by its sales manager Damien Letort to Techniques de l'Ingénieur in September 2025, uses pyrolysis at 400 to 600 °C to burn off the plastic layers (EVA, PET, PVDF), sorts glass, copper ribbons and cell fragments mechanically, and then applies a mild chemical step to lift the silver layer off the silicon. pv magazine described it in 2022 as "a mild thermal and chemical treatment" and quoted Yun Luo saying it "separates the metals and cells in a way that retains the purity of the material".

The claimed difference from shredding lines is that the silicon comes out clean enough to be reused rather than downcycled, and that silver is recovered without heavy hydrometallurgy. The CORDIS objective also covered a second feedstock: the more than 40% of silicon lost as sawing dust when ingots are cut into wafers. ROSI has not published purity figures for its recovered silicon or silver; Techniques de l'Ingénieur cites only the 9N to 10N purity that solar-grade silicon needs in general.

What Ramp-PV Promised, and What the Record Shows

Ramp-PV's objective was full valorisation of the raw materials in PV waste: reconditioning silicon for the PV, electronics and silicone industries, and non-destructive extraction of silver. ROSI's strategy was to build "a series of PV-waste upcycling sites", partly through joint ventures with industrial partners, and to become "global-leader in circular economy of PV in 5-10 years".

The final report on CORDIS says that by October 2022 ROSI had signed a recycling service contract and off-take agreements for recycled materials (no partners named), that industrial-scale equipment had been "dimensioned, ordered and delivered", that the environmental permit had been granted, that construction had started and that a fundraising round had closed. It does not claim the plant was running. Its own life-cycle estimate is that a 3,000-tonne line would avoid at least 6,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year.

In October 2022, as the project ended, ROSI told Horizon Magazine that the French plant would open in early 2023, recycle 3,000 tonnes of panels a year, extract 90 tonnes of silicon, 30 tonnes of copper and 2.5 tonnes of silver, and reach 10,000 tonnes within two years. In January 2022 InnoEnergy had given the same 3,000 tonnes and 90 tonnes of silicon, with around 3 tonnes of silver, and pv magazine had reported commissioning planned for the fourth quarter of 2022. ROSI's review of 2023 dates the inauguration of ROSI Alpes to June 2023 and the first sales of recycled materials to September 2023; Techniques de l'Ingénieur confirms the plant has run at La Mure since June 2023 (its registered address is in neighbouring Saint-Honoré). In the same review ROSI still described 10,000 tonnes a year as a capacity the plant "will reach" in the coming years.

1. First industrial upcycling siteDelivered, lateROSI Alpes opened June 2023, eight months after the project ended; confirmed by ROSI and Techniques de l'Ingénieur.
2. Silver, silicon and copper sold to industryPartly shownFirst sales from September 2023 per ROSI; buyers, volumes and purity not published.
3. 3,000 tonnes of panels a yearNot shownNo throughput figure for any year has been published.
4. 10,000 tonnes within two years of openingNot achievedStill a future target in ROSI's 2023 review; no announcement since.
5. Silicon from sawing waste reintegratedNot announcedNo customer or volume for recycled wafer-sawing silicon has been announced.
6. A series of further sitesPlannedTeruel (10,000 t) and Rheinfelden announced in 2026; neither built.

On this record Ramp-PV did what a two-year grant can do: it carried ROSI from pilot equipment to a permitted, equipped plant, as research director Yohan Parsa told Horizon Magazine ("It was the transition from the lab to the factory that became possible with the EU support"). The project also won the EU's first Industry of the Future Award in September 2022. The production targets ROSI attached to that plant cannot be checked, because no output has been published.

Customers, Partners and Funding Since the Award

ROSI's main feedstock comes through Soren, the French producer-responsibility organisation for solar panels. pv magazine reported in 2022 that Soren selected ROSI in July 2021, and in March 2026 ROSI said Soren had re-appointed ROSI Alpes "for the coming years", without volumes. pv magazine lists Rosi among Soren's recycling partners in a year in which Soren oversaw the processing of more than 12,736 tonnes of panels nationally; ROSI's share is not given. ROSI's website lists collection partnerships in Switzerland (SENS eRecycling) and the United Kingdom (Waste Experts and City Electrical Factors) and industrial partners including Evonik, Siemens, ITOCHU, AGC Glass Europe, Solarge and METALOR; none of these has published a volume or contract value.

The EIC part of the blended finance did turn into equity. ROSI is listed in the EIC Fund portfolio, one of about 320 companies on the official list, and the EIT named the European Innovation Council, ITOCHU and EIT InnoEnergy as investors in a €7.4 million round announced on 3 February 2023, which was to finance the French plant. The EIC Fund's stake and the amount it invested are not public. By April 2023 ROSI had raised "around €12 million" since its founding, according to the EIB. ROSI SAS's registered share capital rose in steps from €45,555 at registration to €160,245 in May 2026, per BODACC.

The Money

Since 2022 both companies have filed their accounts with revenue kept confidential, so only the net result is public, through the INPI accounts data. ROSI SAS lost €254,896 in 2021, the last year with public revenue (€4,250), then €550,787 in 2022, €1,177,205 in 2023, €2,186,810 in 2024 and €1,876,292 in 2025. ROSI Alpes, the plant company, lost €1,461,735 in 2023, €2,528,087 in 2024 and €2,785,886 in 2025. The two sets of accounts are separate and are not added up here, because transactions between parent and subsidiary are not visible.

Why Europe Should Care

Silicon metal is on both the EU's critical and its strategic raw materials lists under the Critical Raw Materials Act, according to the Commission's Raw Materials Information System. The Act sets a benchmark that by 2030 recycling should supply "at least 25% of the EU's annual consumption" of strategic raw materials, and that no more than 65% should come from a single third country, according to the Commission. A European route from dead panels back to usable silicon and silver fits that policy closely. Ramp-PV was funded in the EIC's Green Deal round for the same reason, and ROSI's CORDIS objective explicitly framed it as recovering "European sovereignty on the PV and raw materials value chain".

The Verdict

ROSI has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.