Neste, Brightlands Venture Partners, 4 Impact VC and Asahi Kasei announce a combined EUR 11 million investment into Netherlands-based startup Circularise. The goal of the investment is to accelerate the transformation to more sustainable materials within the polymers and chemicals industry by providing new digital solutions to boost traceability and visibility of material flows along value chains.
“Together with partners, Neste leads the way in accelerating the transition towards more sustainable solutions for polymers and chemicals. There is an urgent need for new scalable, end-to-end digital solutions to trace renewable and recycled material flows, providing increased transparency along the value chains. Circularise provides novel solutions for this need, and we are excited to support them in speeding up the critical transition to circular solutions,” says Lars Peter Lindfors, Neste’s Senior Vice President, Innovation.
With its blockchain-based digital product passports, Circularise enables customers to improve resource use, verify provenance, conduct carbon footprint and impact assessments across supply chains. This is relevant in complex supply chains such as those of polymers, chemicals, plastics, metals, and critical raw materials. Additionally, the company provides a solution for mass balance bookkeeping, in order to support the shift from fossil feedstocks to sustainable alternatives in the plastic and chemicals industry.
Circularise’s solution helps suppliers to share sensitive data, like material composition, environmental footprint or LCA data, without risking privacy and confidentiality. This is achieved with technology, which allows suppliers to be in control of which data they want to share.
Circularise’s co-founder Jordi de Vos says: “We’re happy to welcome Neste, Brightlands Venture Partners, 4impact and Asahi Kasei as our investors. Our mission has always been clear: accelerating the shift towards a circular economy through supply chain traceability and transparency. This funding round enables us to scale our business operations, product, R&D as well as to expand our international team. It will not only accelerate our growth as a leading software provider for supply chain traceability, but also support the transition to a circular economy on a global scale.”
The agreement about capital injection has been signed, and the completion of the investment is subject to customary closing conditions. The investment is supplemented with grants from the European Commission.
“Brightlands Venture Partners is excited to lead this Series A round with such a strong consortium of VC’s and industry players. The Circularise team truly understands the challenge of bringing transparency to complex supply chains in the chemical industry and has developed a unique portfolio of tools to enable and facilitate this transition. We believe that combining the unique skill set of the Circularise team with the deep sector expertise of Brightlands Venture Partners will allow Circularise to accelerate in bringing supply chain transparency to the chemical industry,” says Mary McCarthy, Partner at Brightlands Venture Partners.
“Through collaboration with Circularise, we, Asahi Kasei, expect to contribute to building a transparent supply chain as a supplier’s responsibility and shift to a circular economy by promoting utilisation of products made from biomass and recycled raw materials,” says Takashi Morishita, President of CVC at Asahi Kasei.
“The Circularise team is and continues to be the leader in blockchain for sustainability and traceability. 4impact has been an early investor and supporter and we are thrilled to continue on our joint journey towards a circular economy. Circularise’s proprietary technology coupled with the team’s expertise and unwavering commitment will enable complex value chains to be reformed to more environmentally friendly and cost-effective ways,” says Ali Najafbagy, Managing Partner and co-founder of 4impact capital.
By Neste, Press Release
Source: neste.com
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