Netherlands-based Circularise, a software platform that provides end-to-end traceability and secure data exchange for industrial supply chains, announced on Thursday that it has raised €11M in a Series A round of funding.
The funding was announced at the Dutch 4TU Impact Challenge finale, held at the Valo Hotel in Helsinki.
This investment was led by Brightlands Venture Partners and joined by Asahi Kasei, Neste, and existing investor 4impact capital. The round was also supplemented with grants from the European Commission.
Mary McCarthy, Partner at Brightlands Venture Partners, says, “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.”
Capital utilisation
Circularise says it will use the funds to advance its mission to bring a circular economy to industrial supply chains.
Co-founder Jordi de Vos says, “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.”
“End-to-end supply chain traceability”
Founded in 2016 by Mesbah Sabur and Jordi de Vos at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Circularise is a software platform that provides end-to-end traceability and secure data exchange for industrial supply chains.
The company helps plastic manufacturers, brands, and OEMs to trace raw materials from the source into parts and, ultimately, to end products. By extension, it helps brands get visibility into their own Scope 3 emissions and other metrics, which is aligned with the regulatory push around Digital Product Passports, the SEC’s proposed climate risk disclosure rules, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. It uses blockchain and other emerging technologies to enable companies to share data about their products while retaining privacy over sensitive information.
Circularise aims at sustainability and believes that adopting a circular economy will prevent the waste of raw materials while making a product. It disrupts the long-held linear systems and reduces the harmful effects on the environment. The company has developed an open-source protocol and decentralised network to integrate transparency into global supply chains and migrate towards a circular economy.
Additionally, the company recently launched MassBalancer, its solution for mass balance bookkeeping, to support the shift from fossil feedstocks to sustainable alternatives in the plastic and chemicals industry.
Recent developments
Over the last six years, with the assistance of the EIT Raw Materials, the European Commission, angel investors, and now venture capitalists, Circularise increased its workforce to 40 employees, entered new markets like Japan, joined the collaborative ecosystem Catena-X to strengthen a secure data exchange in the automotive industry, and partnered with international businesses like Asahi Kasei, Covestro, Domo Chemicals, Marubeni, Mitsubishi Chemicals, and Neste, among others.
