VESS — the Bulgarian manufacturer of vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) within the Clever Synergy Investment Fund (CSIF) structure — and NanoFrontier Inc., a Japanese deep-tech startup spun off from the prestigious Tohoku University, have signed a Letter of Intent, marking the beginning of a collaboration in the field of next-generation energy storage.
A meeting between Bulgarian industrial vision and the Japanese scientific school
VESS is building Bulgaria’s first-of-its-kind fully automated production facility for vanadium flow batteries and one of the few such facilities in all of Europe — a technology characterized by an exceptionally long service life (over 30 years) and a high degree of safety. The company has already broken ground on a new plant in the Zagore – Elenino industrial zone, and as part of the ambitious HEROS Park project near Stara Zagora, it is developing production capacity that will create over 120 new jobs in the battery plant alone, with additional high-tech manufacturing in Kardzhali, Pazardzhik, and other regions of the country.
NanoFrontier was founded in April 2025 by a young team from Tohoku University and is establishing itself today as one of the most interesting deep-tech names in Japan. The company is developing its own advanced technology for the production of organic nanoparticles — a reprecipitation method building upon over 30 years of pharmaceutical research at Tohoku. Applied to the field of energy storage, this technology paves the way for a new type of organic electrolyte that complements and enriches VESS’s family of solutions. Supporting the young team at NanoFrontier are renowned investors such as Genesia Ventures, Nittobo, Animal Spirits, and Mobile Internet Capital — further recognition of the development’s potential.
A vision for a shared future in energy storage
The two companies have outlined a wide range of areas for joint work — from collaborative testing of technological compatibility and opportunities for manufacturing cooperation and local assembly in Bulgaria, to participation in pilot and commercial long-duration energy storage projects in Central and Eastern Europe. The partnership is a natural extension of VESS’s drive to be an open platform for the world’s best technologies and NanoFrontier’s ambition to transform Japanese scientific achievements into real-world industrial solutions.
“It is an honor for us to work with a team like NanoFrontier’s — young, ambitious, and the bearer of some of the most advanced developments to emerge from Japanese universities. We believe that the future of energy storage is built precisely on such encounters between visionary industrial teams and world-leading science. This is an investment in the future — ours, the region’s, and that of the next generations of engineers and entrepreneurs,” commented Lyubomir Gradev, CEO of VESS.
The partnership between VESS and NanoFrontier is another step in CSIF’s long-term strategy to develop modern, sustainable energy infrastructure — built on the foundation of bold investments, trust in young talent, and openness to the technologies shaping the future of clean energy.
