Joltech Solutions is a Spanish deep tech scale-up based out of Barcelona’s “L'Hospitalet de Llobregat”, focused on providing electrochemical solutions for electrolysers in the green hydrogen sector. Leveraging a versatile platform technology for catalytic coatings on various substrates, Joltech Solutions aims to revolutionise electrochemical devices across multiple industries.

Last October, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Alberto Bucci, CTO and Co-founder of Joltech Solutions, to delve into the company's groundbreaking technology, the dedicated team driving its innovations, its vision for the future, and how they’re faring in bringing it to life. 

You can also listen to the interview recording here (or watch the video below):

Electrochemical solutions for a sustainable future

Alberto explains that Joltech Solutions’ core mission is to introduce its advanced catalytic technologies to the electrolyser market, a crucial component in green hydrogen production. The company's innovative coatings promise to create “much more stable devices”, leading to “more reliable, cheaper” electrolysers that can be produced at the scale needed to help meet Europe’s and others’ ambitious green hydrogen targets by 2030.

Alberto notes that an electrolyser, with its anode and cathode polarities, requires stable and efficient coatings for reliable operation.

“You don't want any break. So this is only possible if the coating you apply is stable and provides more efficiency and more durability to the components. Otherwise, the machine will break down.” 

He underscores the fundamental importance of their work, stating: “There is no electrolysis without electro catalysis, and this is where we are trying to get in”.

A well-balanced team for scalable success

Making the magic happen is a strong and multifaceted team. “As a founder, I’m happy to say that the team is very well balanced. I’m the CTO – the tech guy who developed the technology, and I’m joined by a CEO with a very strong commercial profile and a COO with extensive industry experience.”

Alberto is also happy to have one of his former post-doctoral supervisors, a fellow scientist and co-founder, serving as a scientific advisor to the company. 

“With the team, we really have a good fit in terms of skills and also personality. The latter is perhaps just as crucial, and much of our success can be attributed to a good balance between the two.”

Navigating the challenges of a scale-up

Alberto outlines the current primary challenge for Joltech Solutions: scaling up the production of both anode and cathode electrocatalysts to offer a complete solution. Having successfully scaled the anode technology from a low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 3 to nearly TRL 9 in just two years, the company is now focused on achieving similar progress with the cathode. 

According to Alberto, it’s a pivotal moment for the scale-up: “We are facing many challenges typical of any startup and now have to cross the so-called Valley of Death, which typically resides in this TRL 2 to 6 zone – we’re fully focused on this.” 

The Valley of Death is a phase in a startup’s lifecycle where growth challenges converge with a critical inflection point for the technology. 

From lab to pilot line

For Joltech Solutions, every step that brings their technology closer to reality is seen as an achievement. In terms of milestones, Alberto recounts the successful Series A funding round last year, which secured €6.5 million in investment. This crucial funding enabled the establishment of a pilot line capable of large-scale production of industrial electrodes – and the team is making the most of it. 

“We now have a pilot line in place that is able to produce on a large scale – the maximum electrode size that we can coat is up to 6m², which is the same size of the biggest available industrial electrodes, and our capability to produce on a large scale is around 20,000m² per year. I'm proud to say that there are not many companies in the world that can do the same.”

He further highlights the versatility of their pilot line, describing it as “agnostic” in its ability to handle various coatings. “With a relatively small amount of money, we built something that is quite unique.”

Joining the EIC Scaling Club for synergistic growth

For Alberto, the EIC Scaling Club is a very valuable initiative, both from the perspective of a participating scale-up, and – in a broader sense – that of a citizen of the EU. 

As to the former, he highlights the potential for valuable synergies among the club's members, as a major value-add of the Club. 

“For instance, you can find people from related fields that aren't strictly green hydrogen, but you can find synergies with and try to branch out from your original vertical application. So there are many things and many brilliant people that can bring some value to your journey – it could be from a technological level, a commercial perspective, or simply meeting the right investor. So it's a really quite unique environment.”

More than that, Alberto sees the Club as an invaluable initiative for Europe’s deep tech innovator community, pointing to the lack of consolidation of these fields, which the Club seeks to bring together and translate into tangible solutions that benefit society. 

“My principal ambition as a scientist has always been to take the knowledge buried in scientific papers and extract it so that people can actually use it.” 

Now, as the co-founder of one of Europe’s leading deep techs and a member of the EIC Scaling Club, Alberto is doing exactly that – and advancing the green hydrogen ecosystem in the process. 

Watch the full interview with Dr. Alberto Bucci below, or visit our YouTube channel to explore our other videos:

About the EIC Scaling Club

The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.

The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.

The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.

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