Italy: EUR 10 million for SAES Getters’ R&D projects

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a EUR 10 million agreement with SAES Getters, an Italian company active in special metallurgy and materials science. Made available by the EIB and 50% guaranteed by the country’s export credit agency SACE, the loan to SAES will finance its
research, development and innovation (RDI) activities in order to further develop and apply its expertise and competencies in metal science know-how.

SAES is a strongly RDI focused Group developing advanced material technologies that can be used in a large variety of products applied in different industries (i.e. consumer electronics, medical devices, scientific and research systems, automotive, lighting and telecommunications).
In addition, SAES cooperates with Universities and R&D centers (i.e. particle accelerators like CERN in Europe, ESRF in France, PSI in Switzerland, KEK in Japan, Cornell USA or SSRF in China), to which it inter alia provides research infrastructure equipment and services.
This transaction is supported by the new generation of financial instruments for innovative and growth companies “InnovFin – EU Finance for Innovators”, with the financial backing of the European Union under Horizon 2020. “InnovFin MidCap Growth Finance” is specifically dedicated to improving access to risk finance for research and innovation projects of midcap and SME companies in the European Union.

European Investment Bank
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending institution of the European Union owned by its Member States. It makes long-term finance available for sound investment in order to contribute towards EU policy goals.

SAES Group
A pioneer in the development of getter technology, the SAES® Group is the world leader in a variety of scientific and industrial applications where stringent vacuum conditions or ultra-pure gases are required. In more than 70 years of activity, the Group’s getter solutions have been supporting innovation in the information display and lamp industries, in sophisticated high vacuum systems and in vacuum thermal insulation, in technologies spanning from large vacuum power tubes to miniaturized silicon-based microelectronic and micromechanical devices.

The Group also holds a leading position in ultra-pure gas refinement for the semiconductor and other high-tech markets.
Starting in 2004, by leveraging the core competencies in special metallurgy and in the materials science, the SAES Group has expanded its business into the advanced material markets, in particular the market of shape memory alloys, a family of materials characterized by super elasticity and by the property of assuming predefined forms when subjected to heat treatment.

These special alloys, which today are mainly applied in the biomedical sector, are also perfectly suited to the realization of actuator devices for the industrial sector (domotics, white goods industry, consumer electronics and automotive sector).