Can Europe recharge its battery industry?

Europe has already taken a couple of bruising hits in batteries. Northvolt in Sweden and Morrow in Norway both filed for bankruptcy, and that has fed a familiar fear: the continent may have missed another major technology wave. But the battery business is still growing, and not just because cars and factories are moving away from fossil fuels. The problem is that building at scale is slow, expensive and brutally competitive, especially against China.

So some of the most interesting bets are being made at the smallest scales. LeydenJar, a Dutch company named after an 18th-century precursor to electric cells, is using plasma deposition to build a thinner, lighter silicon anode. Silicon is cheap and effective, but pure silicon tends to crack as batteries charge and discharge. LeydenJar says its ultra-thin foil stays stable and can lift battery life, charging speed and energy density by up to 50%.

That work has taken 10 years, and commercial-scale production is due to begin at the end of 2026. Christian Rood, the company’s chief executive, argues that the real advantage comes from Europe’s semiconductor know-how, especially in Eindhoven, where chip firms like ASML sit nearby. The pitch is not that Europe should outbuild Asia on volume. It is that Europe can own a critical step in the chain, where patents and intellectual property matter a lot.

Powall, based in Delft, is chasing a similar idea from another angle. It is developing equipment for nanocoating the powders used in batteries, using atomic layer deposition to add tiny protective layers measured in nanometres. Roderik Colen, its chief executive, says the coatings can slow the aging that ruins battery materials over time, and can help turn promising lab materials into something commercial. The company is not trying to make whole batteries either. It wants to make the bits around them better.

That narrower strategy may suit Europe. Alexander Brown, a senior analyst at Merics, says having one advanced part of the supply chain in Europe would be valuable, especially if it offers high margins. But he also warns that China keeps pushing to reduce its dependence on outside technologies, just as it has long wanted to do with ASML. Meanwhile, funding remains awkward: Rood says Europe has money, but a much lower appetite for risk than Asia or the US, so companies end up juggling grants, debt, EIB support and investors. In other words, Europe may not win batteries by building the biggest plants. It may win by making the parts everybody else needs but nobody talks about at dinner.