Episode 56: Christian Fischer, Bcomp

Christian Fischer, CEO and co-founder, Bcomp. Source | Bcomp

In this installment of CW Talks, we explore the world of natural fiber composites and their growing role in sustainable lightweighting with Christian Fischer, CEO and co-founder of Bcomp (Fribourg, Switzerland), a company specializing in high-performance natural fiber composites for automotive, motorsports, marine, aerospace and even satellite applications. What started as a garage project focused on lightweight skis has evolved into an award-winning technology now headed into series production with BMW M. Fischer discusses Bcomp’s “race-to-road” strategy, the technical hurdles of scaling natural fibers for demanding markets and where flax-based composites fit — and don’t fit — in the broader composites landscape.

Listen to the full interview in an episode of CW Talks, or read an excerpt below.

CompositesWorld (CW): Take us back to the early days of Bcomp. How did the company get started?

Christian Fischer (CF): It actually goes further back than 2011, when the company was founded. Julien — one of my co-founders — and I were Ph.D. students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in the composites lab, working on lightweight skis. We met two other people who became co-founders, and it all started with an obsession of making power skis and free-touring skis lighter. We knew most of the weight is hidden in the core, so we began working with foams, and later balsa wood, as core materials.

The need to reinforce balsa wood in shear led us to a key realization: we couldn’t use such a beautiful natural material and then reinforce it with synthetic fibers like carbon or glass. Most ski manufacturers actually use their wood waste from milling to heat their factories, so they couldn’t have it contaminated with synthetics. We thought it would be elegant to have a balsa core reinforced with cellulose fibers. At the time, there was a real buzz around natural fibers in academia — KU Leuven was clearly the leader — so we sourced the first flax fiber composite material on the market and started working with it in the garage.

Bcomp’s ampliTex and powerRibs featured in an automotive interior panel.

CW: What were the key challenges you had to overcome as one of the early adopters of natural fiber composites?

CF: Using flax primarily to reinforce ski cores — a material hidden inside the structure — helped us enter the market and build the embryo of a supply chain, because we essentially sidestepped the well-known problems with natural fibers, especially moisture absorption. We had the lightest ski wood core on the market for a couple of years and really hit a nerve in an industry that was very focused on lightweighting.

But once we understood there was much more potential beyond the niche skiing market, we had to confront the real challenges. If you don’t protect the fibers properly, the structure will eventually absorb moisture, change color and change surface appearance. Those are issues that are acceptable in motorsports, where optical properties aren’t critical, but as soon as you start talking about automotive large series, optical and long-term stability become key. That’s where you really have to solve the challenges intrinsic to natural fibers.

CW: Bcomp has become a leader in natural fiber composites across automotive, motorsports, marine and even satellites. How do you think about product-market fit for these materials?

CF: It starts with understanding the intrinsic mechanical properties. Our fibers have a very high stiffness-to-weight ratio and low density, which guides us toward thin-walled, non- or semi-structural applications. With sports and leisure as a steppingstone, we identified motorsports as a sweet spot around 2015-2016. It’s a dynamic niche with short design cycles and quick adoption of innovation, and importantly, it gives you exposure to OEMs, because every carmaker has a motorsports arm they use as an innovation and marketing tool.

Our materials also have a safety feature: they don’t splinter on impact. In a crash, debris from carbon fiber parts can puncture tires with disastrous consequences. Natural fiber composites won’t — you can break them and not even cut your finger on the edge. The SRO Motorsports Group, which oversees GT4 racing worldwide, actually changed the rules to require natural fibers for body panel applications, largely driven by safety but also tied to motorsport’s need to rethink its sustainability strategy.

We’re not claiming to replace all carbon fiber — that would be naive. We’re not making boat hulls or fuselages. It’s about understanding the right product-market fit and then layering in additional features: design and color flexibility for interior parts, processing simplifications and sustainability as a door opener.

Bcomp received a JEC Composites Innovation Award in the  automotive category at JEC World 2026. Source | CW

CW: Congratulations on winning first place in the automotive category at the JEC Composites Innovation Awards. Can you talk about the BMW M collaboration?

CF: BMW is a beautiful example of our race-to-road strategy. We started with them on a single part for their Formula E car, then moved into DTM, then into the GT4 car. In parallel, we began working with BMW Group itself, identifying the champions — I call them “intrapreneurs” — who were passionate about getting these materials into series production cars. You need those people in large corporations who are willing to take some risk.

The project started 4.5-5 years ago. Back in 2023, we restructured Bcomp to make it fit for automotive — matching their teams with counterparts in purchasing, logistics, R&D and quality. You’re working on three fronts simultaneously: meeting customer requirements, building your supply chain and building your own production. That has put the Bcomp system under very high pressure, but it’s extremely rewarding to see it culminate in the JEC Award and series production launching in the coming months.

CW: What advice would you give other startups working in sustainable materials?

CF: First, identify a market with low entry barriers and a short time to market — automotive is extremely demanding, so be cautious. You need to acquire proof of concept quickly to build confidence with early investors, employees and the broader startup ecosystem. The most efficient way is to land first customers in a smaller niche that validates your product-market fit.

Second, recognize that convincing your first suppliers is just as much a sales exercise as convincing your first customers. They know they won’t make money with you for months or years, so they really have to buy into your story.

And finally, have a vision much bigger than where you start. We knew we had strong product-market fit in mobility, but we were smart enough to know we couldn’t go into large series from day one. We had to solve technical challenges and build a supply chain that, frankly, was developed for textiles ever since the Egyptians — the linen industry. We had to select the right partners, train them and make them fit for automotive at the same time we were making ourselves fit for automotive. (Read more at CW’s Startups and Investors topic page.)

CW: Looking ahead, where do you see natural fiber composites expanding next?

CF: We’re firm believers that natural fiber composites have a strong offering across mobility — everything that moves. Aerospace is a major focus, because lightweighting is the key driver and is directly linked to decarbonization: most of an airplane’s CO_₂ footprint comes from the use phase, so reducing weight reduces kerosene burn. The big challenge there is fire retardancy and heat release. We’ve solved it at lab scale and now need to replicate it at industrial scale.

Infrastructure has been more opportunistic for us — we’ve done some bridges in Holland — but lightweighting isn’t always essential in that space, and there’s a premium for natural fiber composites that the market won’t always pay.

Our biggest near-term push remains automotive, where we have two dimensions: exterior parts for performance cars, which is really the Champions League of composites in terms of surface quality and long-term color stability, and interior parts where we’ve developed extremely sustainable solutions — not just in the material itself, but in processes that eliminate steps, which translates directly into further decarbonization.