On July 27, 2026, at 08:45 CEST, the board of Sweden’s Heliospectra resolved to file for bankruptcy. At 11:10 the same morning, the Gothenburg District Court declared the company bankrupt. Two hours and twenty-five minutes separate the two press releases. Heliospectra had been building greenhouse lighting since 2006.
The last report told on itself
Heliospectra traded on Nasdaq First North under the ticker HELIO, so its filings are public. The final report came out on April 24, 2026, covering January through March. The sales lines look healthy: net sales of SEK 5,148 thousand against SEK 1,901 thousand in the same quarter of 2025, order intake 6,233 against 3,129. Close to a tripling.
Two lines further down cancel that out. Operating cash flow for the quarter was negative SEK 17,137 thousand. Cash at the end of the period was SEK 9,638 thousand.
Do the division. Burning 17,137 over three months is 5,712 a month. Cash of 9,638 divided by 5,712 gives 1.69 months. On its own reporting date the company had under two months of runway, printed in a document published three months before the bankruptcy. In dollars at the September 22, 2026 rate, that is about $982,000 of cash against a quarterly burn of $1.75 million.
The CEO letter in that same document reads:
While the market environment remains competitive and decision cycles for larger projects are still to some extent uncertain, we see encouraging signs that our positioning continues to strengthen.
It goes on to describe greenhouse project discussions worth SEK 70 to 100 million across Canada, the Netherlands and the Nordics, then adds, honestly, that none of the large projects had been signed. The numbers and the prose in one document point in opposite directions.
Raised money in November, gone by July
Heliospectra ran a rights issue in the fall of 2025. The maximum was 494,710,691 shares at SEK 0.10, roughly SEK 49.5 million. Subscription closed November 19 and the outcome was announced November 20: 322,612,449 new shares, or 65.2% of the maximum, SEK 32.261 million gross. Shareholders who sat it out were diluted by about 54%.
Not all of that was cash. On September 29 the company had taken a SEK 10 million loan from Weland, and under its terms Weland had both the right and the obligation to set the loan off as payment for subscribed shares. So SEK 10 million of the SEK 32.261 million was an existing debt converted, and new money came to roughly SEK 22.3 million, about $2.27 million, before issue costs.
Set that against the losses. The 2025 operating loss was SEK 41,275 thousand, which is 1.28 times the entire gross proceeds and 1.85 times the new cash. The raise brought in less than the company had lost the year before it.
From the close of subscription to the court ruling: 250 days.
Why it ran out
Order intake for 2025 was SEK 21,073 thousand against SEK 42,303 thousand in 2024, a drop of 50.2%. One caveat belongs here, and the company supplied it: order confirmations from two Canadian customers totaling SEK 8,827 thousand arrived in the first half of 2025 but were excluded from the 2025 intake because they had been announced back in Q1 2024. Add them notionally and the decline is 29.3% instead of 50.2%. Both readings are defensible depending on what you count.
Either way, the annual order book came in below the annual operating loss: 21,073 against 41,275. The company was selling less than half of what it was burning.
The stated reason was blunt. Principal shareholders had said in advance that they would not join another financing round on the proposed terms, and Weland Stål AB told the company it did not intend to keep funding Heliospectra as the sole investor. No new investor stepped in within the time available. Christian Andersch of Setterwalls Advokatbyrå was appointed trustee.
A useful sense of scale
Heliospectra’s 2025 revenue was SEK 28.5 million, about $2.9 million. Its operating loss that year was about $4.2 million. The company’s own press release describes it as the “global leader in innovative horticulture lighting technology.”
A global leader with under $3 million in annual sales is worth remembering the next time a lighting vendor’s marketing says the same thing. Specialty horticultural lighting is a small market, and the companies in it are small too. That size is also why a single anchor investor stepping back can end one inside a year.
What a lighting buyer should take from this
Heliospectra sold fixtures together with control. Its helioCORE system is proprietary, so schedules, spectrum recipes and telemetry all depend on the vendor’s software. When the vendor disappears, the warranty and spare parts question is joined by a control question.
What I did not verify, and will not claim: what actually happened to customer warranties, whether helioCORE still runs after the bankruptcy, or whether a buyer emerged for the assets. The trustee was appointed in July, the process is open, and I found no public decisions. So this is not a forecast. It is a reason to ask three questions before buying any controlled lighting.
Do the fixtures run standalone if the controller loses the vendor’s cloud. Does the contract give you firmware access or local control should support end. Are the drivers inside standard parts, so repair does not require the factory. Those answers cost nothing before the purchase and a great deal after it. They belong in the equipment line of your cost model alongside the price per fixture.
