First Solar, Inc. (Tempe, Arizona) plans to invest approximately $270M in a dedicated research and development (R&D) innovation centre in Perrysburg, Ohio. The new facility is believed to be the first of its scale in the United States and is expected to accelerate American leadership in the development and production of advanced thin film photovoltaics (PV).
Canatu (Vantaa, Finland), a leader in advanced CNT for automotive and semiconductor industries, announced the closing of a €18M funding round, led by long-standing investors 3M Ventures, the venture capital arm of 3M, Ascend and eFruit International Inc. New investors to Canatu also included Minth Group Ltd., Nordea, and Varma. With this latest funding round, the company has raised a total of €74M in financing since 2008.
Avery Dennison’s (Mentor, Ohio) atma.io connected product cloud joins the CIRPASS consortium, bringing together a core network of leading organisations in building the European vision for a unified Digital Product Passport (DPP) approach across multiple value chains. Funded by the European Commission under the Digital Europe Programme, CIRPASS aims to prepare the ground for the gradual piloting and deployment of the DPPs from 2023 onwards, with an initial focus on the electronics, batteries and textile sectors.