A 100% recycled stainless steel produced by Swiss supplier Panatère, melted using a concentrated solar furnace instead of an electric one. The process cuts its carbon footprint to roughly 165 times less than conventional steel, and it's the material behind Pragma's P1 – Perseverance case.
Solar Steel is produced by melting recycled stainless steel offcuts using concentrated sunlight in a solar furnace, rather than the electric furnace used in conventional steel production. Panatère, the Swiss supplier behind the process, has been developing it since 2017 from a facility in La Chaux-de-Fonds, sorting offcuts from local industry by grade before melting them down under the sun.
The environmental case is the main draw: Panatère states an impact of 0.041 kg CO2-eq per unit, against 6.8 kg CO2-eq for conventional steel, a roughly 165-fold reduction. The resulting material is a 316L-grade stainless steel (DIN 1.4441), the same corrosion-resistant, biocompatible grade already common in fine watchmaking, so the environmental benefit doesn't come at the cost of material performance. In 2022, Panatère gave the International Watchmaking Museum in La Chaux-de-Fonds its first ingot of the material, marking its entry into horology. Pragma's P1 – Perseverance case is machined from it.
Both are 100% recycled, but Solar Steel is melted using a concentrated solar furnace rather than an electric one, which is what gives it the larger drop in carbon footprint, roughly 165 times less than conventional steel, against about 10 times less for Panatère's standard recycled steel line.
Pragma uses Solar Steel for the case of its P1 – Perseverance. Panatère, the material's Swiss producer, also gave the International Watchmaking Museum in La Chaux-de-Fonds its first solar-recycled steel ingot in 2022.
It's 316L-grade stainless steel (DIN 1.4441), the same corrosion-resistant, biocompatible grade already widely used in watch cases, so switching to Solar Steel doesn't mean a trade-off in durability or finish.