Startup turning ‘forest glue’ into ‘miracle’ conductive graphene plots first factory

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It looks a little like a jar of old soy sauce. But the murky liquid holds the promise of something new.

Graphene is often described as a “miracle material”: thin, strong and water-repellent, used in everything from sports gear to cement and tyres. The version produced by Kista-based Bright Day Graphene also conducts electricity and heat, unlocking new applications in batteries and other electronic devices.

“The ambition is mainly to work with customers in energy storage — for fuel cells, batteries and supercapacitors. Electronics and telecoms clients are also interesting for us,” says co-founder and CTO Anna Carlsson.

Another promising area is replacing PTFE — more familiar to most people as Teflon — notes co-founder and CEO Malin Alpsten.

“It’s a substance within the PFAS family, used in fuel cells, lubricants and countless other applications. Many manufacturers are now seeking sustainable alternatives.”

It’s not enough for a material to be green — it has to be better

“The coolest material”

Carlsson and Alpsten founded Bright Day Graphene in 2017.

“I wanted to create a new, environmentally friendly material for energy storage. But being green isn’t enough — it has to be better. We realised graphene could solve a whole range of problems,” says Carlsson, who comes from a research background.

Alpsten adds: “It’s the coolest material. Graphene improves everything.”

The solution was to use lignin, a raw material found in all trees and plants (which Impact Loop has previously referred to as “the forest’s glue") and which exists in abundance as a residual product in the pulp and paper industry’s black liquor. Producing graphene conventionally requires graphite to be ground into flakes, but Bright Day Graphene has devised a fully bio-based, low-emission alternative with comparable performance. The resulting product is a type of reduced graphene oxide with properties similar to graphene, and the company now holds patents across major global markets.

Preparing for a new funding round

Eight years in, Carlsson and Alpsten are well into preparations for a new funding round. The aim is to break ground on an industrial-scale production facility in Sweden in 2026.

“Today we mainly produce for Vinnova-funded projects. There’s strong customer demand, but meeting it requires much larger volumes,” says Alpsten.

At present, the company can manufacture graphene in gram quantities, while clients want kilograms — at more competitive prices.

“With full-scale industrial production, we’ll be able to produce 100 tonnes per year. That’s when we reach the price point we’re targeting.”

The value of a deeptech cluster

Beyond Kista’s access to transport links and talent, Alpsten stresses the advantages of being embedded in a wider research and industrial ecosystem.

“It’s a huge advantage that the Electrum Lab is run by KTH — Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, the country’s leading technical university. We collaborate with a professor here who researches graphene, so we can exchange insights and test our material in different projects.”

Bright Day Graphene’s progress, she says, would have been far harder elsewhere.

“If you search for ‘office with a lab’, you often end up with a room with a 3D printer. The infrastructure at Electrum is phenomenal — if we want to use a high-end machine, we can rent it by the hour instead of buying one. Being here is worth its weight in gold.”