Kraftblock is a German deep tech scale-up developing high-temperature thermal energy storage systems for industrial decarbonisation. The company – member of the Club’s Batteries & Energy Storage market group – has built a flexible, modular platform that stores cheap renewable electricity as heat and dispatches it on demand to energy-intensive industrial processes.

We spoke with Martin Schichtel, co-founder and CEO of Kraftblock, to learn how the technology works, how the company came to be, and why the window for scaling feels closer than ever.

Storing heat where industry needs it most

Kraftblock's core product – which shares its name with the company – is a high-temperature energy storage platform designed to work with whatever energy source and industrial process a customer brings. The system leverages renewable electricity to store heat at temperatures between 300 and 1,300 degrees Celsius, making it suitable for some of the most demanding industrial environments.

The platform's defining characteristic is its modularity. Because Kraftblock is deployed primarily in brownfield sites – factories and plants that already exist – it must fit around existing infrastructure rather than demand new space. Stackable storage modules can be configured to any footprint and any capacity, whether a customer needs 30 megawatt-hours or 200, or more.

Equally distinctive is the separation of charging and discharging from the storage core itself. This allows the ratio between the two to be tailored to a customer's energy market and grid situation. In some countries, cheap electricity is available in short windows, requiring a charging rate five times faster than discharge. Elsewhere, the constraint is grid capacity: a plant needing 200 megawatts to fully electrify its heat process might have access to only 50 megawatts today. Kraftblock installs at that lower threshold and upgrades as the grid develops – an option Martin describes as unique in the market.

"It's a novel thermal energy storage – a very stable one in multiple environments – but you have the freedom to design the system according to customer needs. Our guiding line is: create a standard for the customer and do not try to standardise your customer."

Kraftblock is also offering heat as a service, taking on the capital, operational, and energy risk itself and selling heat directly to the customer – a model designed to lower the commitment threshold for industries still weighing up the investment.

A company built from chemistry, experience, and family

Martin's path to founding Kraftblock was gradual. His background is in materials science and chemistry. He spent years deploying specialist coatings in the steel and ceramics industries, watching large quantities of heat go to waste. A television report about a concrete-based heat storage planted a question: what if storage could be engineered for genuinely high temperatures?

"I started thinking about how a storage material would need to be designed to fit those applications. Materials are always at the core of such a development. If you are able to design the right material, you can cover the applications."

Around three years of scientific thinking followed, shaped by an additional ambition: the material had to be sustainable, globally available, and amenable to circular economy principles. Kraftblock was founded in 2014, and from the outset it was a family endeavour, with Martin joined by co-founder Susanne König, his wife. Within a few months, a core development team of five had formed around them.

Today, Kraftblock employs close to 50 people, and growth has been deliberate. Engineers are hired during active project execution so they can learn alongside the existing team, arriving ready for the next contract. Over the past 18 months, the company has strengthened its operational backbone – procurement, supply chain, project controls, and commercial functions – after consciously waiting for the first commercial projects to validate the approach before scaling these areas.

From a white paper to five reference plants

Kraftblock's milestones reflect a careful, evidence-led progression from laboratory to commercial traction. In 2017 and 2018, the team achieved a foundational technical proof point: demonstrating that the storage material performed over an operational lifetime of 30 to 40 years, exactly as theorised. The finalisation of the modular storage unit design followed, giving the company a product it could deploy repeatedly without bespoke re-engineering for each site.

The first proof-of-concept deployment – a four-megawatt-hour system at a ceramics company in Germany – was the defining commercial milestone. Critically, the customer paid for it without any subsidy. Martin is clear about why that mattered:

"Having the financial commitment from the market side was really important. For us, it was proof that the market wants to have such a solution."

A Series A funding round enabled Kraftblock to internationalise, expanding across Europe with investor support and the Series B round in 2023 deepened that network further. Kraftblock now has five reference plants operating across different industries, a track record that is making the sales cycle meaningfully shorter.

The central challenge throughout has been building trust for a novel hardware product. A thermal energy storage system integrated into a working factory is a multi-million-euro capital commitment. There is no trial period, no easy reversal. As Martin puts it, unlike software, you cannot ask a customer to check out a 100-megawatt-hour system for a month and return it if it doesn't work. Convincing customers to take that step and sustaining sales cycles measured in years rather than months has required patience, third-party technical validation, and a portfolio of reference customers willing to share their experience.

Inconsistent regulation across Europe also adds complexity. Martin is particularly critical of incentive structures that favour hydrogen over direct electrification, despite a significant efficiency gap: Kraftblock's system converts electricity to heat at 95% efficiency, while the equivalent hydrogen pathway delivers around 40% of the original electricity as usable heat to the customer.

"The market needs stability. Not a decision made today that is reverted after the next election. I would love to see efficiency first. Not hype first."

Personalised support at the right moment

Kraftblock joined the EIC Scaling Club recently, and Martin's early impressions are shaped by one quality that stands out: the programme's willingness to meet companies where they are rather than applying a uniform framework.

"They try to understand where Kraftblock is at the moment – where we need support, where we face problems – and then give us that support. That's not naturally given for accelerator programmes. Usually they make the cut so it fits 90% of all parties, but not 100%. Taking you from where you are to where you want to go: that's what I see as one of the biggest advantages."

Kraftblock is pairing its EIC Scaling Club membership with participation in the BMW Foundation Scale Up Programme, which Martin sees as complementary – one focused on technology and commercial scaling, the other on leadership development and team-building. Together, he believes the two could provide a meaningful push over the coming months as the company accelerates its commercialisation and extends its reach across European industry.

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 have been 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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