Skeleton invited to speak at EU Industry Days 2022
Today, our Head of Communications and Policy Arnaud Castaignet was invited to speak at the EU Industry Days 2022.
EU Industry Days is Europe’s flagship annual event, highlighting industrial frontrunners and ongoing industrial policy discussions whilst improving the knowledge base of European industry. It is the main platform to discuss industry challenges and co-develop opportunities and policy responses in an inclusive dialogue with a wide range of stakeholders. The 2022 edition is taking place in hybrid format in Brussels between 8 - 11 February 2022.
Arnaud Castaignet was speaking at a session opened by Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education, and Youth, and dedicated to R&D investment and EU green technologies leadership. Other speakers to this session were Kinga Stanislawska, Managing Partner and co-Founder of Experior VC, Kresten Ørnbjerg, VP, Head of Global Public Affairs at Vestas Wind Systems A/S and Mojca Zupan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of PlanetCare.
The session was showcasing R&I-based success stories and discussed how to support industrial eco-systems in their green transition and how to build on EU leading position in green technologies. The starting point for the conversation was the new figures from the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard 2021 which shows that EU companies are among the global leaders in green technologies but must nonetheless increase their efforts in R&D investment for Europe's industry to lead the green transition in the global economy.
Arnaud shared Skeleton’s journey as a deep tech company and explained how research and innovation in our proprietary curved graphene material is at the core of our strategy. He told value and job creation in Europe in the next decades won’t be driven by e-commerce but by deeptech, and, thanks to strong academia, deeptech is the natural domain of Europe. Deep tech companies by definition are based on research & innovation, whether you’re looking into achieving quantum supremacy, developing mRNA technology, or, in our case, new materials and next generation battery technologies, but developing a deep tech company from the initial lab testing to commercial manufacturing can take over 10 years, as we saw in our own experience.
He underlined the leading companies in battery technologies are all investing and developing materials for next generation batteries - sodium-ion for CATL, solid-state for LG for instance – and that Skeleton has a head start in this regard.
Arnaud highlighted how crucial the support from the EIC, which is now the largest deeptech investor in Europe, the EIB, and EIT InnoEnergy has been for Skeleton, as well as the participation to IPCEI and the European Battery Alliance.
Asked about ideas to facilitate private R&I investment in Europe and scale up the green R&D-intensive sector to maintain our EU green technologies leadership, he offered suggestion already presented in the EU Unicorns Group report Skeleton has contributed to such as an innovation-oriented public sector procurement policy able to buy early-stage innovations and the need for more high-quality IPOs for deep tech startups, for instance through a European fund acting as a cornerstone in high-quality IPOs for deep tech startups. He also underlined the need to increase support from the EIC with direct investments in deeptech startups with capability to support large ticker sizes, develop private ecosystem, cut the red tape, deploy funds faster.
