BISON Polymers raises €27M to reshore nitrile glove production to Germany
BISON Polymers, a German nitrile disposable glove manufacturer founded in September 2024, has secured €27M in growth financing from a regional banking consortium led by Sparkasse Siegen. The consortium includes NRW.BANK and three other regional savings banks. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia is also providing a guarantee for the financing, signalling the project's political importance.
The funds will expand BISON's production site in Siegen from two lines to six. Once complete, the company expects to produce around 1.9 billion nitrile gloves per year.
IMAP M&A Consultants advised BISON on structuring the deal and selecting financing partners.
The pandemic exposed Europe's near-total dependence on Asian glove imports — mainly from Malaysia and China. BISON was founded to address that vulnerability, and it has moved fast: its first production line is already running, the second is being finalised, and it is already shipping to early partners.
Germany and the EU have been pushing to reshore critical medical supply chains. A state-backed guarantee from North Rhine-Westphalia underscores how seriously policymakers take domestic PPE production.
BISON is competing against established Asian manufacturers that benefit from decades of scale, lower labour costs, and mature supply chains. Scaling from two production lines to six is a significant operational leap for a company less than a year old.
Demand for disposable gloves surged during Covid but has since normalised. BISON will need to prove it can compete on price and quality in a market where margins are tight.
This deal fits a broader European trend of using public-private financing to rebuild strategic manufacturing capacity onshore. From semiconductors to pharmaceuticals to PPE, governments are willing to backstop industrial projects that reduce import dependency.
Regional banking consortia — rather than venture capital or private equity — funding a hardware-heavy startup also reflects how capital-intensive reshoring plays often don't fit the traditional VC model. For BISON, debt backed by a state guarantee may be a smarter route than equity dilution at this stage.
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