French cleantech company ROSI has secured more than 20 million euros in combined Series B funding and European grants to scale its high value solar panel recycling operations across Europe, including the construction of a new 10,000 tonne per year facility in Teruel, Spain. The financing, announced on 28 April 2026, is led by InnoEnergy, CMA CGM, the European Innovation Council and Spanish family office G3T, alongside other strategic investors. The deal matters because it directly addresses one of the most significant emerging challenges in the energy transition, which is the management of tens of millions of tonnes of photovoltaic panels expected to reach end of life by 2050.

 

The Spain Facility and Industrial Scale Up

 

The new Spanish plant in Teruel is being developed under ROSI's INSPIRE PV project, which is supported by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency under the European Innovation Fund. The facility will feature an integrated and highly automated production line designed for large scale deployment, with a processing capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year. It will be the first fully standardised production line built using ROSI's proprietary recycling technology, marking a major milestone in the industrialisation of photovoltaic recycling.

The Spanish facility builds on operational experience gained at ROSI Alpes, the company's first industrial site, and is positioned to recover high purity raw materials including silver, silicon, copper, aluminium and glass. This material recovery profile is commercially significant because each of these materials has substantial value when delivered at high purity, particularly silver and silicon, which are critical components of new photovoltaic manufacturing. By recovering these materials at industrial scale, the facility is designed to convert end of life solar panels into a viable input stream for European photovoltaic and electronics supply chains.

 

The Investor Coalition Behind the Round

 

The Series B round attracted a combination of strategic and financial investors, with InnoEnergy, CMA CGM, the European Innovation Council and G3T leading the round. Finadvice, a Zurich based corporate finance advisory firm specialising in deep technology, acted as strategic financial advisor and also participated as an investor alongside Swiss and Polish family offices. The breadth of this coalition reflects the strategic interest in establishing European capability for photovoltaic recycling.

Gianmarco Panone, Investment Manager at InnoEnergy, framed the investment as renewing confidence in one of the most emblematic photovoltaic assets in the firm's portfolio. Romain Girard, Investment Manager at CMA CGM, described ROSI as illustrating the kind of industrial circular economy platform that Europe needs, combining differentiated technology with a clear path to industrial scale and a contribution to strategic resource resilience. Rafael Tous Godia, Chief Executive Officer of G3T, framed the investment as supporting a one of a kind circular recycling platform across Europe and in the Spanish photovoltaic value chain. Pier Paolo Raimondi, Managing Director at Finadvice, highlighted the combination of a large market opportunity, technical excellence and strong availability of non dilutive capital as factors that made the round attractive to industrial minded financial investors.

 

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The Strategic Importance for European Resource Resilience

 

The ROSI investment supports a broader European policy priority of reducing dependency on imported critical raw materials. Silver, silicon and high quality copper are essential to photovoltaic manufacturing, and Europe currently relies heavily on imports for many of these materials. By recovering them from end of life panels at high purity, ROSI's process supports the development of a domestic supply chain that strengthens European strategic autonomy. The Spanish facility's production capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year places it at meaningful industrial scale and provides a credible building block for a European wide circular photovoltaic ecosystem.

Doctor Yun Luo, President and Co founder of ROSI, framed the funding as enabling the company to build a European scale industrial platform for the circular management and production of strategic raw materials. The framing positions the business as both an environmental solution and a strategic industrial asset, which is consistent with the broader trend of European policy treating circular economy infrastructure as part of industrial competitiveness rather than purely as environmental policy.

 

Leadership Strengthening at the Existing Site

 

To support the next phase of growth, ROSI has appointed Thierry Galvez as Production Site Director of ROSI Alpes, the company's first industrial site. Galvez brings 30 years of experience in the photovoltaic industry, primarily from Photowatt, and joined the company on 1 April 2026. His role focuses on industrial performance, operational excellence and establishing the conditions needed to support future expansions.

The appointment is commercially significant because the transition from a first generation industrial site to a fully standardised production line in Spain requires deep operational discipline. Industrial scale up of cleantech processes typically reveals operational challenges that were not visible at smaller scales, and bringing in experienced photovoltaic industry leadership provides ROSI with the operational management capacity needed to navigate this transition successfully.

 

Renewed Partnership With Soren

 

ROSI Alpes has also been selected by Soren, the French eco organisation responsible for managing end of life photovoltaic equipment, to recycle solar panels collected across France over the coming years. The renewal of this partnership is significant because it provides ROSI with secured input volumes that support the operational viability of its existing site while also generating reference data for the larger Spanish facility. In a sector where input availability is one of the most important determinants of plant economics, long term agreements with national collection bodies are a critical commercial advantage.

The Soren relationship also reinforces the connection between ROSI's industrial platform and the regulated end of life photovoltaic ecosystem in Europe. As more European countries develop comparable collection and recycling frameworks under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive and related national rules, the integration of specialist recyclers such as ROSI into these national systems will be one of the key mechanisms through which the photovoltaic circular economy is built.

 

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Why Photovoltaic Recycling Capacity Matters

 

The wider strategic case for the ROSI expansion rests on the volumes of photovoltaic waste expected to reach end of life over the coming decades. By 2050, tens of millions of tonnes of photovoltaic panels installed during the rapid build out of the past 20 years will reach the end of their operational life. Without industrial recycling capacity capable of recovering high purity materials at scale, the majority of this volume risks being processed through low value recycling streams or sent to landfill, both of which represent significant losses of materials and value.

Conventional photovoltaic recycling typically recovers basic glass and aluminium but loses much of the value embedded in silver, silicon and high grade copper. ROSI's process is designed to address this gap by recovering the high value materials at purities suitable for direct reuse in industrial supply chains. As regulatory pressure for circular economy outcomes increases across Europe, recyclers capable of delivering high purity output are likely to capture a growing share of available waste streams and command commercial premiums for their output materials.

 

What the Funding Signals for the Circular Economy

 

The wider significance of the ROSI Series B is what it indicates about the maturation of circular economy infrastructure in Europe. After several years in which circular economy investment was concentrated in early stage technology development, the deployment of large scale industrial facilities is now beginning to attract significant institutional capital alongside strategic and family office investors. This shift from research stage funding to industrial scale up financing is essential to delivering the physical capacity required to manage growing volumes of end of life renewable energy infrastructure.

For other circular economy companies in the renewable energy sector, the ROSI experience provides a useful reference point for how to combine equity finance, European grant support and strategic industrial partnerships into a coherent funding package. The performance of the Spanish plant once operational, measured by recovery rates, material purities, throughput and unit economics, will determine whether ROSI becomes the reference platform for European photovoltaic recycling or one of several competing approaches in a developing market segment.

 

Source: ROSI