Even before the establishment of Metalot, The Future was involved in setting up the network organization and the business plan. The Future fulfilled the role of interim director for more than a year to pull the cart in the start-up phase.

Through proactive business development and attracting financing from MRE, RvO, the Province of Noord-Brabant and OPZUID, the lab in Budel and a prototype were realized, among other things. This prototype was successfully tested at Bavaria in 2020 at a capacity of 100kW. The further developed system is now being scaled up to 500kW-1MW and spin-off IRON+ is now developing the first fully commercial metal fuel installation for Royal Swinkels Family Brewers.

In the past 4 years, The Future has set out the roadmap together with Metalot, determined the strategy and objectives and attracted timely financial resources and partners to realize this on a project basis. For the subsidy projects, The Future has also taken on the project management and project communication and accountability to ensure the progress of these projects, but also the overarching roadmap and the reserved subsidy resources.

The total amount of the projects realized by The Future for Metalot currently amounts to more than 10 million euros, of which more than 4.1 million euros is a subsidy. Given the continuation of the intensive relationship, this amount is expected to increase in the coming years.