The Guardian: SoftBattery Developer Enfucell One of the Hottest European CleanTech Companies

Enfucell Oy of Espoo, Finland, was selected as one of the hottest private cleantech companies in Europe on the “Cleantech100” list published in the Guardian newspaper on 18th of September, 2008.

The Guardian list was prepared together with Library House, a business information and consulting company based in Cambridge, UK, with a focus on fast-growth and innovation-led private companies.

The final selection was made by the advisory board representing members from industrial and investment companies like General Electric, Siemens, Virgin Green Fund and Morgan Stanley.

Says Richard White, a senior analyst of Library House about the selected companies in the Guardian: They are potentially the big names of tomorrow, rather than household names of today. But all of the Guardian/Library House CleanTech 100 share the potential for significant growth. And all might have a significant impact on our lives in future.

According to the Guardian clean technology is attracting billions of dollars of investment around the world and carries the hope of a low-polluting and sustainable future.

Dr. Jussi Suomela, Chairman of Enfucell, sees the recognition as an acknowledgement of the value of the eco-designed power source. “Traditional batteries are still too often the main harmful component with electronic products, and we believe our world deserves more environmentally friendly solutions as electronics become disposable.”
 
Enfucell Oy is an Espoo, Finland based technology company with its roots in the Helsinki University of Technology. The company has developed SoftBattery, a thin, flexible 1.5 volt environmentally friendly
power source optimally utilized in disposable and short lifetime products. Potential SoftBattery applications include e.g. RFID (radio frequency identification) micro sensors, functional packaging, and
cosmetic and pharmaceutical delivery systems.

Enfucell has received numerous international awards for the development of the SoftBattery. In January 2007, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland named Enfucell one of the world’s 47 leading technology pioneers. The American high technology publication, Red Herring, named Enfucell one of the promising European technology companies. In March 2007, the developer of the
SoftBattery, Dr. Xia-Chang Zhang, was selected in Beijing as one of the ten most influential foreign Chinese by China’s largest media companies.

Enfucell was founded in 2002 and employs ca. twenty people, including a presence in the United States, and it is owned by its founders, private investors, Veraventure Oy, a Finnish governmental venture fund, and Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Co., the largest private sector pension insurance company in Finland.

In addition to its owners, Enfucell has been financially supported by Tekes, The Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation.