Europe’s industrial competitiveness is back at the centre of the political conversation. Energy security, growing competition from China and the United States, and a renewed push for technological sovereignty have all fed into a broad consensus: Europe needs stronger industrial value chains.
At Altris, we have spent the past few years working with Czech partner Draslovka. What began as a search for manufacturing expertise turned into something bigger – a shared quest to create a European industrial ecosystem for sodium-ion batteries. In this effort, it soon became clear to us what separates countries actively positioning themselves for future industries from those still debating what role to play. The experience has challenged some of our assumptions and offers a few lessons that reach well beyond batteries.
- Strategic industries need strategic capital
For many emerging technologies, innovation is rarely the hardest part – rather industrializing them is. The move from lab breakthrough to industrial production is where promising technologies most often succeed or fail, and where access to capital becomes decisive.
What stands out in Czechia is the recognition that industrial competitiveness cannot be built through policy alone; ambition must be matched by financial capacity. Institutions such as ČEZ, the Czech state-owned utility company, have built investment mechanisms to support industrial development and the green transition, driven by a broader understanding that staying relevant in strategic sectors requires real money behind the ambition.
Europe consistently produces excellent science and innovative companies, but it struggles to turn those strengths into competitive industries. The missing link is patient, industrially minded capital – and that gap remains one of the continent’s most serious competitiveness problems.
- Industrial ecosystems are built over decades, not election cycles
What impressed us in Czechia was not any single policy initiative, but a shared conviction that industrial development takes deliberate, sustained effort – building capabilities today that may not pay off for years. Czechia is also a country with a clear ambition to leverage its manufacturing expertise and heritage and become an owner of technology, innovation and critical parts of Europe’s emerging value chains.
This mindset has manifested itself clearly in our partnership with Draslovka. What started as a supplier relationship has grown into a long-term industrial partnership. As a family-owned company, Draslovka has shown a willingness to invest in future growth areas, build new industrial capabilities, and take calculated risks alongside its partners.
Industrial ecosystems are rarely built quickly. They emerge when companies, investors, academia and policymakers share a commitment to long-term value creation over short-term wins. In an increasingly competitive world, this patience is itself a competitive advantage.
- The strongest value chains are rarely built alone
Another important lesson our partnership with Draslovka has reinforced is that no company – and no country – needs to do everything itself.
The temptation in strategic industries is to control every step of the value chain. In practice, trying to build everything independently adds complexity, capital requirements and execution risk. We believe the stronger approach is to find partners with complementary strengths and build together. In many cases, the necessary industrial building blocks already exist elsewhere in Europe – the task is to identify and mobilise them, rather than recreating capabilities that already exist.
At Altris, our value chain now stretches across Europe: technology developed in Sweden, production scaled in Czechia, batteries manufactured in Slovakia, and system integration completed in Germany – together forming an ecosystem built faster, leaner and at lower cost than any single actor could have managed alone. The result is a battery that is neither Swedish, Czech, Slovak nor German, but the product of a truly integrated European value chain – one that cuts our dependence on imported conflict minerals and East Asian industrial capacity.
Building the next chapter of European industry
Europe’s future competitiveness hinges on more than technology. It will come down to whether countries make long-term industrial choices, whether capital is available to back those choices, and whether Europe gets better at connecting complementary strengths across borders. For policymakers and investors, the task is concrete: put patient industrial capital behind strategic sectors, and back the cross-border partnerships that turn European science into European industry. We are ready to build with those who do.