In an exclusive interview with Silicon Luxembourg, the Luxembourg spacetech and solar panel developer Maana Electric shared that it extended its contracts with the LSA and the ESA and confirmed that it has €100m worth of purchase orders lined up. Founder and CEO Joost van Oorschot tells us more about the scale up’s recent developments and finalising its Series A.
Last time we talked, Maana Electric had just completed its latest fundraising and was getting ready for commercialisation. How far along are you in that process today?
We’re quite far along, as we’re going to announce in our upcoming press release. We signed additional contract extensions on our R&D contracts with the Luxembourg Space Agency and the European Space Agency.
In terms of commercialisation, we’ve pushed that back a little bit, but we’re going to start in early 2024. We’ve had huge traction and lots of interest in the market, which is great. Today, we have about €100m euros worth of purchase orders lined up, more than 20 machines sold.
And in terms of fundraising, we are in the process of raising our Series A. We have a lot of interest in the market but as I’m sure you also know, the market is not so easy at the moment. We have commitments for most of the round, but if there are any readers interested, now is a good time to contact us.
How much are you looking to raise in your Series A?
We won’t disclose the exact amount but it will be more than €10m. We have commitments for the majority already but now it’s about finding a strong lead investor.
What other major developments have Maana Electric gone through in the past year?
We’ve grown a lot in the last years, and as a company grows you experience growing pains. So the last year has really been about handling these growing pains and structuring the company to get ready for the next iteration of growth.
On the technical side, we have developed a lot and somewhat changed our business model. Most of our purchase orders are actually for a portion of the TerraBox because most of our customer interest has been for the panel manufacturing side of the product, which is also the most advanced and ready to commercialise.
Getting the full TerraBox ready will take a bit longer, especially to get to the reliability benchmark we have put for ourselves, but since we wanted to commercialise as soon as possible, it suited us that most of our orders were for the manufacturing side of the TerraBox.
Could you explain a bit more in-depth what’s included in this product?
It’s a localised automated solar panel manufacturing solution called the FIS. We provide everything needed to manufacture the solar panel for which we operate equipment remotely. The customer needs next to no expertise in solar panel manufacturing just labourers to feed in the components at the right time. For the rest, the machine operates automatically. The goal is to make local solar panel manufacturing as easy as possible.
We also provide all the maintenance needed for the machinery, including all the consumables needed to manufacture the panels. Our customers, mainly solar panel installers, project developers or distributors, mostly don’t have solar panel manufacturing expertise in-house. Maana allows them to focus on their core business while increasing their margins from their existing sales pipeline.
In the long term, our product will be able to produce fully from sand to solar panel but right now, our solution will allow the client to manufacture their solar panels locally. What we’re offering is control over their own production and increasing their margins, which in the end is the main driver of our customers.
