How Bcomp’s Sustainable Plant-Based Materials Are Challenging Carbon’s Performance

Bcomp is engineering natural fibers that are super lightweight and so tough as to rival carbon-fiber. Whether partnering with Porsche Motorsport and McLaren Racing, or with electric car brand Polestar, the shipyard Baltic Yachts, or creating cutting-edge snowboards and skis, the Swiss company’s sustainable materials challenge the performance of man-made fibers and are getting the attention of industries keen to cut their CO2 emissions.

Founded in 2011 in a garage by two self-confessed material scientist geeks, Christian Fischer and Julien Rion, the idea from the start was to develop a nature-based, lightweight, durable material that could compete with and perhaps even outperform carbon. Experimenting with skis, Bcomp initially worked with flax fibers to reinforce the balsa wood cores and improve shear stiffness to great success. The “bCores” material the team created was subsequently adopted by some of the biggest names in freeride skiing.

Bcomp now employs forty people comprising of material scientists and mechanical and processing engineers, while working closely with the Swiss Institute of Technology in its research and development. On a quest to make space exploration more sustainable, it is also working with the European Space Agency’s Clean Space program to develop the technical fabric range “powerRibs” and “ampliTex”. I caught up with company CEO Fischer on Zoom to understand the potential for sustainable materials and see his ambitions for Bcomp.

Nargess Banks: I like your brand story: from skis in a garage to lightweighting performance cars at Porsche, McLaren and Polestar – all within ten years. How did the Bcomp idea come about?

Christian Fischer: Having completed our PhDs, Julien and I soon realized we were incapable of working in big corporate environments. So, we became two geeks in the garage making skis as light as possible. We figured out that mixing light balsa wood with flax fibers results in the perfect match and this concept is essentially what we based the Bcomp foundation on. We had our eye on mobility from the start though, but to enter the market we needed to perfect the material and establish our platform in the leisure industry.

Did you realize at that stage that you were onto something unique and could apply the material elsewhere?

The essence of our business is lightweighting - as in making materials lighter. And so we could see there was the potential to go so much bigger with flax since the material’s intrinsic properties are so good, but we needed to come up with a way to engineer it. We didn’t want to just copy-and-paste the concept of carbon-fiber and replace this with flax. The material would then be too expensive to produce in volume and would be picked up by designers for niche applications only. After much experimentation, by 2015 we had mastered the technology to a point where we could make larger body parts.

Why start your adventure in motorsports and with Porsche?

We purposely entered the automotive industry via motorsports to use it as a real-time tester of our technologies and gain the visibility we needed. Remember that in 2015, the concept of organic and green had negative connotations — seen to be inferior options. So the partnership with Porsche Motorsport sent a strong message to the industry that sustainability and performance is a winning marriage.

I first came across your work in 2020 having seen the impressive flax-based composite materials form the seatbacks of the Polestar Precept concept. How did the partnership come about?

Our policy is to establish the solutions and have proof of concept, then aim at democratizing it for mainstream applications. By 2017, we were ready to scale-up the business and significantly increased our resources. It just so happened that around that time we were recommended to Polestar by a former Volvo employee who worked with us. We called our move “the race to road” strategy — transferring the technology from motorsports to road cars. Now we are at the next stage of expanding our company and working with large-scale mobility.

Can you describe the typical collaboration process with car companies?

They approach us to help make their cars lighter and decrease their CO2 footprint. We then provide the material solution but also the full technology package of how to transform our materials into a part to achieve the perfect surface finish and optimum functionality. They then go to their suppliers to industrialize our solution.

What has been your experience of working with Polestar?

Polestar has been instrumental in guiding us through the process of transitioning to becoming a large-scale automotive supplier. The team also helped us see the power of design in the automotive industry. You see we come from a naïve world where we think, once everything is perfectly engineered, then everyone’s happy! Our approach was to take a lightweight material and feed it into a standard interior, but at Polestar the designers want to tell the story of sustainable performance, show our material as an aesthetic surface. It has been educational and exciting to work with them.

A lot has happened since you ventured into lightweighting skis in 2011. The world has woken up to the reality of sustainable transport and you have shown that natural material can challenge the properties of carbon without polluting the environment. What is your long-term vision?

At Bcomp our belief is in the complete transition into a circular and plant-based economy, which naturally means using local feedstock. Our long-term vision is therefore to offer locally grown solutions. This means building a robust technology platform but with market specific answers. We don’t want to establish a supply chain that offers a “one-size fits all” solution. Besides, with what we have experienced with the pandemic, in the future we will see much more complex supply chains - smaller satellite studios.

How does this approach then impact on your investment in raw materials?

Where possible we will work with national natural fibers rather than building global businesses using only European plants. We plan to open a supply chain for Polestar in China where the cars are built. Over there we are working with industrial hemp instead of flax as it has similar properties of being robust and sustainable.

There is a great deal of industry talk around sustainability, but how genuine is the push to create truly carbon neutral businesses?

I feel this latest green industrial revolution is being pushed by the end-consumer. The push is coming from people demanding for society to change. The petrol age is on the decline. It is over. Climate may be our biggest challenge, but it is also our biggest opportunity.

I agree. They also say pandemics are punctuation points in history — and there is little doubt that the current global crisis has accelerated life into the future.

Absolutely. It has shown how we can rethink our lifestyles and see where we can find comfort and pleasures without a heavy CO2 footprint. I’m a firm believer that humanity is designed to genuinely go forward, so I don’t have a romantic vision that we’ll go back and live in the forest. Rather I believe in solving our biggest challenge, global warming, through technology.

Most inventive solutions in design history have come at a time of crisis. I’m thinking of the 1941 Eames Leg Splint which led to the marque’s cutting edge molded plywood furniture. What do you see as the great perils and possibilities now?

Sustainability is a must. And we are seeing a genuine push from the automotive industry and with an acceleration towards circularity. The challenge for them will be cost. They are aware that going from one of the most optimized supply chains — as in cheap plastics used in today’s car interiors — to circular materials will come at a price. But they are equally aware that they no longer have a choice and that they must take this step.

What does this mean for Bcomp?

It means first optimizing our initial large vehicle program, then pushing hard to have an impact on the industry. I’m not saying we will make a difference on our own, but by inspiring others, showing that sustainable and high-tech can work together, that they are a match, I feel we can help make a positive impact on the industry.

See how Bcomp’s flax-based natural fiber composite solutions help reduce plastic content and cut weight on the Polestar Precept. Also take a look at how others in the transport world are pushing convention for inventive ecological solutions: Micro’s Microlini bubble commuter, Chris Bangle’s radical Red, the anti-poaching Cake Kalk AP, Komma’s fresh look at urban transport, Arksen educational adventure yachts, and Pix Moving’s reinvention of cities as mobile flexible units.