Circularise, a blockchain solution for tracing materials and sharing data, has raised €1.5 million from the EU Commission’s H2020’s SME Instrument Phase 2, to fuel the continued growth of the collaborative project for circularity in the plastics industry.
This announcement, shared first with Packaging Europe, follows on from our in-depth interview with Circularise earlier this year, when we discussed the challenges faced by circular economy startups.
Circularise’s founder Jordi de Vos stated: “This funding shows that the EU Commission is ready to invest in emerging technologies that can enable real growth in the circular economy space. With this support we will scale projects with our existing partners, attract new people to join us on this exciting journey and accelerate the transition to a circular economy on a global scale.”
“Circularise Plastics is building a data-exchange protocol with privacy at its heart, which we believe is a smart strategy as privacy concern is what often refrains companies from becoming more transparent.” says Thomas Nuyts, Director of Global Product Management, who is leading the development of Circularise Plastics at Domo Chemicals.
The EU funding is seen as a big step forward for Circularise to continue its work on making supply chains more transparent and sustainable, so that plastic waste can be countered. The vision is to become an industry standard: a secure and open system for global supply chains.
“The backing of the European Commission means a lot, and we’re excited to support Circularise Plastics in the next stage of growth,” says Dr. Burkhard Zimmermann, Head of Resin, Digital Transformation & Sustainability, Covestro Polycarbonates.
Over the last four years since Circularise launched in 2016, the company proved blockchain to be a strong enabler for all the data, documents and information exchanges happening within complex supply chains, while safeguarding sensitive data.
Since the collaboration with Covestro and Domo was announced last year, the first version of the systems has been built and tested. Building on this success,in spring 2020, Circularise was selected into an acceleration program by the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. Now the raised capital will fuel the continued growth of Circularise Plastics.
