Antefil: The Venture Leader Cleantech transforming lightweight structures

23.09.2024 16:00, Rita Longobardi

Meet Christoph Schneeberger, Co-Founder of Antefil. The Cleantech startup offers a more cost-efficient and cleaner way to produce lightweight components for applications in mobility, transport, energy and sports goods. In November, Christoph and the other nine Swiss National Cleantech Team members will travel to Munich on a business development and investor roadshow..

Name: Christoph Schneeberger
Location: Zurich
Nationality: Swiss
Graduated from: ETH Zurich, CAS ELTV and Dr. sc. Mechanical Engineering
Job title: Executive lead & Co-Founder
Number of employees: 7 permanent employees + 2-5 interns at any time
Money raised: CHF 3.14 M
First touchpoint with Venturelab: Venture Briefing event in 2020 featuring Tolremo Therapeutics and Xorlab.



Can you tell us who your product or solution helps, and how?
Current composites production is based on impregnating reinforcing textiles with a liquefied plastic, which is time- and energy-intensive, leading to high costs and emissions. Antefil provides manufacturers of high-performance structures with a far more efficient material based on fibres which are coated with a recyclable plastic right during spinning, making them more affordable and much quicker to process.

What market are you addressing and what is the potential of your startup in that market?
Our focus is on structures used in mobility and transport, which is where we see the biggest potential impact. Over the past three decades, this sector was the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases worldwide and in the EU, and the largest emitter in Switzerland. Especially car production is suffering a heavy increase in curb weight, so lightweight becomes increasingly important to cut emissions and costs not just during use, but also in production. We see the potential to cut the total weight of an average passenger car by 10% and to replace about 390 kg of steel, unreinforced plastic and aluminium with our recyclable composite solution.

How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup?
That was a group effort, but basically, it was born out of frustration with the complexity of impregnation processes which are typical in the composites industry. Taking a holistic perspective, we found that this constitutes the bottleneck for the entire sector, yet everyone was focusing on how to make impregnation quicker, rather than how to get rid of it. Our current CTO Paolo came up with the idea for hybrid fibres as an alternative and so we set out to test it. The rapid successes thereafter quickly led to the decision to transfer this technology to industry and we decided a Spin-off company would be the best way to keep the team onboard as well.
 

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What do you expect from the Venture Leaders Cleantech roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision?
Antefil’s business depends on a strong international network of partners and customers and we are convinced that this roadshow will accelerate our brand-building and business development efforts on all fronts.

What are your team’s key achievements to date?
Following the successful testing of our technology in an industrial environment in fall 2023, we are excited to have secured a first partner for serial production at a capacity of multiple tons per month, starting in early 2025. To date, our material was and is being tested in more than ten different pilots, we published a first collaborative demonstrator showcasing the use of our material together with injection moulding, and we have more and bigger projects in preparation.

What is the most challenging and rewarding aspect of being a founder?
Building a new business takes a lot of effort from many different stakeholders, so leading and coordinating the work with our team, investors, customers and partners can sometimes be challenging. But whenever the successes we set out to realize manifest themselves, it makes it that much more rewarding.

What is the most important lesson you have learned as a founder?
The importance of empathy in a professional context and at all levels. Business happens between people, not corporations.

What is your favourite productivity hack/tool and why?
Prioritizing realization over detailed understanding and optimization. It means getting output earlier and creating facts which also help derisk the next set of decisions in an iterative process.

What was your dream job when you were a child?
It was either becoming a famous drummer or somehow playing with Lego professionally. Studying mechanical engineering basically was an extension of the latter – I now get to work with much more fascinating “toys”.