Rotterdam-based Infinity Recycling, an impact investment fund, has closed its first fund — Circular Plastics Fund, at €175M to invest in young recycling companies that have passed the startup phase.
The fund, with a target size of €150M, will support the industrial and commercial scale-up of companies enabling advanced plastic recycling.
The European Investment Fund (EIF) backed the fund with €50M along with Chevron Phillips Chemical, GC Ventures, a foreign pension fund, tank storage and transhipment company Vopak, and others.
“We want to kick-start the raw materials transition,” says co-founder Jeroen Kelder to FD.nl.
The fund supports companies with scalable technologies that need financing for the industrial and commercial scale-up of their operations.
Supports advanced recycling technologies
As traditional (mechanical) recycling causes plastics to lose their initial properties (safety for food use, strength, or elasticity), the Circular Plastics Fund supports advanced recycling technologies.
These include chemical processes that enable the full recycling of end-of-life plastic waste, producing new plastics with virgin-equivalent properties and reintroducing them into the existing value chain.
Infinity Recycle’s founders, Kelder and Jan-Willem Muller started fundraising efforts four years ago, and they have recently exceeded their target of €150M.
According to FD.nl Kelder has now found a destination for €32M from the fund, which ranges from the Clariter company in Poland to Ioniqa in Geleen.
At Ioniqa, PET bottles are converted into reusable PET. Clariter ‘cracks’ plastic by heating it, turning it into oil used industrially.
Three of the five companies invested in use pyrolysis technology to recycle plastic. The waste processors heat the plastic in a vacuum, up to 350 degrees Celsius, resulting in a liquid called naphtha which is distilled oil from which new plastic can be made.
Building additional recycling factories
Infinity Recycling plans to build five additional plastic recycling factories in the Netherlands and Flanders, returning plastic waste to its original building blocks. Pryme, a Rotterdam-based plastic recycling plant, is already in operation with investment from LyondellBasell, Indorama, and Invest-NL.
Two more plants are being built at Chemelot in Geleen, and additional factories are planned for Moerdijk, Eemshaven, and the port of Ghent, reports FD.nl.
Infinity Recycling: Creating markets for end-of-life waste stream
Infinity Recycling was founded in 2019 to create markets for end-of-life waste streams by investing in advanced recycling technologies that enable circularity in the plastics industry.
The company’s first offering, the Circular Plastics Fund, contributes to solving the plastic waste problem and unlocking much-needed capacity in high-demand recycled commodities.
The fund implements a return—and impact-driven investment strategy that creates value in advanced recycling and accelerates the transition to a circular economy for plastics.
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