Meet the 10 Startups Decarbonising Materials & Resource Industries

We’re pleased to invite investors and industry players to the HARD2SCALE Pitch Day, an online event showcasing 10 promising deep-tech startups working on solutions for Materials & Resource Industries — spanning clean energy, heat, hydrogen, materials, circularity, and digital enablers.

These are the companies of the second HARD2SCALE cohort, selected through a competitive Europe-wide call and now several months into a cross-border acceleration programme designed to sharpen their investor and market readiness. Cement, steel, aluminium, glass, pulp and paper are among the hardest sectors on the planet to decarbonise: energy-hungry, capital-intensive, and locked into infrastructure built to last decades. Every company pitching is building for that reality — with working technology, not slides.

Date: 11 December 2026
Time: 10:00 CET
Format: Online (Zoom)

Who should attend

• Investors — VCs, business angels, and corporate venture arms active in climate tech, industrial tech, advanced materials, and deep tech
• Industry players — corporates and operators in cement, steel, aluminium, glass, pulp and paper, metals, construction and advanced manufacturing looking for mature solutions to pilot
• Ecosystem partners — accelerators, clusters, and public funding bodies supporting industrial decarbonisation

What to expect

• Live pitches from 10 startups already grounded in practical pathways to scale
• Q&A after each pitch
• The opportunity to request short 1:1 meetings with the startups that interest you most, scheduled individually after the event

Agenda

Time (CET)	Session
10:00 – 10:10	Welcome & programme introduction — the HARD2SCALE accelerator, the cohort selection process, and how the 1:1 matchmaking works
10:10 – 10:55	Pitch block 1: Clean Energy, Heat & Hydrogen — ACR Materials, Kerionics, G-Plus, Thermodraft, Infinite (5 min pitch + 4 min Q&A each)
10:55 – 11:00	Break
11:00 – 11:45	Pitch block 2: Materials, Circularity & Digital Enablers — AddLine Technologies, Ligneasy, ContainerGrid, Watergenics, DMAICapp (5 min pitch + 4 min Q&A each)
11:45 – 11:55	Next steps: 1:1 matchmaking — how to request meetings, how scheduling works, and what happens after the event
11:55 – 12:00	Closing remarks

Meet the startups

Clean Energy, Heat & Hydrogen

ACR Materials — Austria
For hydrogen to scale as a clean energy carrier, the technology that converts it back into power has to become affordable. ACR Materials develops next-generation materials for the core components of hydrogen fuel cells, including gas diffusion electrodes, aimed at making clean hydrogen fuel cell technology cheaper and more scalable for the energy transition.

Kerionics — Spain
Green hydrogen is a critical input for decarbonising energy-intensive industry, but producing it efficiently on-site remains a barrier. Kerionics develops high-temperature Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cell (SOEC) systems for on-site green hydrogen production, targeting the energy-intensive sectors where a reliable, efficient hydrogen supply can displace fossil inputs.

G-Plus — Italy
Industrial heat is one of the largest and most stubborn sources of industrial emissions, and steam in particular is central to countless production processes. G-Plus develops high-temperature steam heat pumps that upgrade low-temperature renewable or waste heat into carbon-free industrial steam — decarbonising process heat without abandoning the steam infrastructure plants already rely on.

Thermodraft — Greece
Enormous quantities of usable energy leave industrial and marine sites every day as waste heat. Thermodraft captures and valorises it, combining Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) engines with high-temperature heat pumps to recover low- and medium-temperature waste heat and convert it into electricity or reusable process heat — turning a persistent loss into a source of clean, on-site energy.

Infinite — France
Waste-heat recovery is one of the largest untapped decarbonisation levers in heavy industry, yet assessing where and how to deploy it has long been slow, expensive and expert-dependent. Infinite offers an AI-powered waste-heat-recovery simulator that turns that assessment into a fast, affordable decision — helping industrial operators identify viable recovery opportunities before committing capital.

Materials, Circularity & Digital Enablers

AddLine Technologies — Bulgaria
Cement and concrete are among the most carbon-intensive materials in the built environment, and much of that footprint comes from how they are formulated and used. AddLine Technologies brings industrial 3D printing automation to low-carbon cement-based materials, enabling more precise, lower-carbon construction and reducing the material waste inherent in conventional building methods.

Ligneasy — France
Kraft pulp mills generate large volumes of lignin that are currently incinerated rather than valorised. Ligneasy’s patented, sulfuric-acid-free lignin separation technology integrates into existing pulp mills without disrupting operations, recovering high-value lignin for use in resins, packaging and thermoplastics — converting a burned by-product into a bio-based feedstock and a new revenue stream for the pulp and paper sector.

ContainerGrid — Germany
Circularity only works if materials can be tracked, moved and accounted for reliably — and if compliance can be proven. ContainerGrid provides a platform for digitising circular supply chains, combining AI-driven material flow logistics with virtual material accounting. It helps manufacturers and recyclers orchestrate reverse logistics and demonstrate compliance, giving circular models the traceability that regulation and customers increasingly demand.

Watergenics — Germany
Water is a critical and often overlooked input in resource-intensive industries, and monitoring it typically means slow, periodic lab sampling. Watergenics offers AI-enhanced, real-time monitoring of process, waste and feed water, replacing that lag with instant water-quality data — enabling faster decisions, tighter resource use and earlier detection of problems.

DMAICapp — Romania
Statistical process improvement is a proven route to efficiency and lower waste, but the tools have long been the preserve of specialists. DMAICapp is a cloud-native, AI-assisted Six Sigma/DMAIC workspace that lets frontline and process engineers run analyses such as design of experiments, process capability and Gage R&R, and generate audit-ready reports — all through a conversational, no-code interface.

Read the full cohort profiles in Scaling the Materials Transition: The Second HARD2SCALE Cohort.

How it works

1. Register your interest by 27 November using this link.
2. Ahead of the event, you’ll receive short one-pagers on all 10 startups, so you can arrive knowing who you want to hear from.
3. Use the interest form to let us know which startups you’d like to meet 1:1 — we’ll take care of the scheduling and send you a personalised agenda with meeting times and links.

Secure your place

Ten deep-tech teams, one morning, and a direct route to the ones worth your time.

Questions? Get in touch at hello@hard2scale.eu.