The materials that power modern life: steel, plastics, textiles, even food have long depended on extraction, scale, and fossil-based processes.

But as supply chains strain and climate pressure mounts, that system is being rewritten.

In Europe, a new industrial playbook is emerging. One where materials are grown, recovered, and reengineered from the ground up.

We caught up with 14 Investors and Founders to hear their take on how Europe’s new model of manufacturing is built on biology, circularity, and scale.

And publish a list of 320 startups manufacturing Europe’s tomorrow.

“Many of the things society says it wants — clean energy, resilient supply chains, electrification, industrial sovereignty — all depend on raw materials and access to the subsurface,” says Max Werner, CEO and Co-Founder at Hades Mining. “Yet the technologies used to reach that subsurface have improved far too slowly. Drilling remains expensive, slow, and operationally painful, especially in hard rock. That felt like a foundational bottleneck hiding in plain sight.”

Policy and supply chain pressures are bringing this challenge into focus.

“Europe’s structural edge in metals and minerals lies less in mining and more in recycling, processing, and circular supply chains,” says Sarah Fleischer, CEO and Co-Founder at tozero, pointing to EU targets for 25% of critical raw materials to come from recycling by 2030.

But the continent remains exposed. “two critical battery materials where the continent relies heavily on external supply chains,” Sarah adds, with refining and processing concentrated outside the region.

Startups are now rethinking both extraction and recovery.

“At Hades Mining, tech-enabled extraction means building an extraction company where technology is not a support function but the core advantage,” says Max. “The goal is to build a new kind of industrial company: one that uses deep tech to unlock resources that were previously uneconomic, inaccessible, or simply overlooked.”

“At tozero, we focus on recovering lithium and graphite first unlike traditional recycling processes that prioritise nickel and cobalt. This allows us to target the largest and fastest-growing value pools in batteries and compete directly with primary raw-material supply,” Sarah explains. With demand surging, “this market is projected to reach ~€200B by 2035, with a potential 30% global supply deficit.”

Meanwhile, the transition away from fossil-based systems is also creating new, unexpected shortages. As coal and steel production decline, so too do the byproducts modern construction has long relied on.

“Supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) e.g., fly ash from coal power plants, are well known as a cost effective way to cut carbon intensity, but they also have important technical properties for durability, making them a critical concrete ingredient. At the same time, conventional SCMs are disappearing as we transition away from the use of coal in power generation and steel production,” says Nicole Florack, VP at 2150. “At 2150, we’re excited about startups addressing the growing pain point of SCM shortages.”

At the same time, waste is becoming a core input to manufacturing.

“The textile industry accounts for up to 10 percent of global CO2e emissions, and less than 1 percent comes from recycled textiles,” says Dennis Nobelius, CEO of Syre. “We want to drive the transition from a linear to a circular value chain by putting textile waste to use, over and over again. Starting with the world’s biggest fiber, polyester”

“The challenge for the industry so far has not been innovation, but solutions that can drive hyperscale, at speed,” Dennis adds. “In 2027, we will start construction of our first gigascale recycling plant in Vietnam, and then continue to scale worldwide. Long term, our ambition is producing more than 3 million metric tons of circular polyester and hence 15+ million metric tons of CO2e abated.”

Others are building entirely new production pathways from waste.

“Europe’s real strength is its research ecosystem in materials science, combined with an industrial culture around circular materials,” says Caroline Thaler, CEO and Founder at Bloomineral. “At Bloomineral, this translates into using biology to produce high-purity minerals from waste, without degrading quality. This year we are scaling to the pilot phase, and for the first time in europe, incredibly technical minerals will be produced using biology.”

From here, manufacturing begins to look less extractive—and more biological.

“We now see emerging companies using mycelium to bind inorganic materials, like rock aggregates. This innovation will open up a new paradigm for mycelium-based materials targeting the construction market,” says Mridul Pareek, Investor at European Circular Bioeconomy Fund. These materials, he adds, will “bring the essence of nature into our homes.”

“If mycelium-based composites can achieve scalability, it could transform industries from construction to packaging and textiles” adds Marc Violo Founder of MycoStories. “They are biodegradable, consume little energy, and have a low carbon footprint.”

This biological shift extends beyond materials into production itself.

“Food biotech offers a real solution to climate challenges,” says Katelijne Bekers, Co-Founder and CEO of MicroHarvest. “Some proteins produced using biotech can use up to 99% less land and water than beef while emitting 98% less CO₂.” To meet future demand, Katelijne adds, the industry must move toward “a hybrid food system where microbial, plant-based, and traditional agriculture complement one another rather than working in silos. The industry needs to while integrating AI-powered productivity, digital twins, and automated production pipelines.”

Similarly, Benjamin Howard, COO and Co-Founder at Vertus Energy sees biology as a programmable system. “Microbes have limitless potential, they’re the natural supercomputers that are woven into the very fabric of how the earth and every living thing on it operates and functions,” Benjamin says. “It’s imperative to understand how they work and apply them with precisiona nd speed at the most difficult challenges we’re facing because they will achieve so much more than we can currently imagine.”

Guy Maurice, CEO and Founder at B’ZEOS outlines a future where: “If successful, B’ZEOS could replace single-use plastics, especially in flexible packaging. Many plastic-based packaging products would be phased out and replaced by biodegradable, seaweed-based alternatives. The industry would shift away from fossil-based materials toward natural, renewable inputs, changing how packaging is made and reducing long-term environmental impact.”

Even energy infrastructure is evolving alongside these material shifts.

“Thanks to decades of research and tens of billions in public support, we now have all the ingredients to scale tokamaks from research devices to energy-producing plants,” says Rustem Ospanov, Founder and CEO at Firefly.

Still, scaling remains the defining challenge.

“If you’re building in this space, you have to consider your scale manufacturing method from the very beginning. As a startup, you can control how you work in the lab and the processes you choose to optimise, but if those aren’t close to scale, you risk creating something that can’t scale at all,” notes Joonatan Laulainen, CTO and Co-Founder at Altrove. He adds “Our approach is to build algorithms that optimise complex material processes while keeping them inherently scalable. That way, we minimise the biggest uncertainty, the parts of manufacturing we can’t control.”

Europe may be uniquely positioned, but it’s not without friction.

“Europe’s structural edge lies in its aligned institutional will and R&D abilities,” says Fabien Koutchekian, Co-Founder and CEO at Genomines. Yet “as highlighted by the European Court of Auditors’ Special Report 04/2026, monitoring and prioritization frameworks remain weak, and projects often face public opposition.”

As innovation accelerates, so does confusion.

“There is an abundance of greenwashing and mixed messaging within the industry. As the ‘new materials’ space grows, terminology naturally evolves and flexes, however, it can be hard to keep up, particularly for consumers. As a result, excitement in innovation can be tempered with scepticism” says Alexandra French, CEO of Xampla. “To overcome these challenges transparency is key, which is why we call for claims to be externally validated, in the way we have with our pioneering testing by the NPL to prove that our Morro Materials are plastic-free and SUPD exempt.”

Together, these shifts suggest a new industrial paradigm—one where Europe’s competitiveness will depend not on what it can extract, but on how effectively it can grow, recover, and reengineer the materials of the future.

The future of manufacturing is being reimagined from the ground up.

From pulling carbon out of thin air and turning it into building materials (Paebbl), to growing food (MicroHarvest), textiles, and proteins from microorganisms (Modern Synthesis), this new wave of innovators is blurring the lines between biology, energy, and industry.

This April 22-23 the HackSummit line up spotlights bright Founders in new manufacturing including:

💨 Malte Fucht, CEO and Founder at Phlair
🏭 Léa Dardenne, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Epyr
🧱 Marta Sjögren, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Paebbl
⚡️ David Oudsandji, Co-Founder and CEO at Voltfang
☀️ Pasi Vainikka, CEO and Co-Founder at Solar Foods
⛏️ Assia Kasdi, Founder and CEO of Milvus Advanced
♨️ Max Werner, CEO and Co-Founder of Hades Mining
🧬 Joonatan Laulainen, Co-Founder and CTO of Altrove
🧵 Jen Keane, Co-Founder and CEO at Modern Synthesis
🪐 Joshua Western, Co-Founder and CEO at Space Forge
🔬 Katelijne Bekers, CEO and Co-Founder at MicroHarvest
🪸 Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, Co-CEO and Co-Founder at Notpla

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