UK-based CIRCTEC, a company specialising in pyrolysis for sustainable end-of-life tyre recycling, announced on Tuesday, May 21, that it has secured €150M in a fresh financing round co-led by Novo Holdings and A.P. Moller Holding.
The funding includes a €75M equity investment from Novo Holdings and A.P. Moller Holding, along with €22.5M in grants awarded by the Government of the Netherlands.
Allen Timpany, Co-founder and CEO of CIRCTEC, says, “We are very pleased to welcome Novo Holdings and A.P. Moller Holding to our board to continue our growth journey together. The success of this new investment round gives us the partners that will enable us to take CIRCTEC to the next level in realising our goal of scaling sustainability. Bringing our technology to a global scale will generate meaningful contributions to the sustainability of the planet.”
Fund utilisation
The capital will enable CIRCTEC to establish Europe’s largest end-of-life tyre pyrolysis recycling facility in Delfzijl, the Netherlands.
Once operational at full capacity, the facility will be capable of processing approximately 5 per cent of the 3.6M tons of end-of-life tyres generated annually in Europe.
The announcement of the construction of the new facility was made during a ceremony on 17th May, attended by key stakeholders including offtake parties BP and Birla Carbon, as well as government agencies such as The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and Groningen Province, which provided grant finance.
What does CIRCTEC solve?
Discarded tyres pose significant environmental and health risks, accumulating in landfills and polluting ecosystems with toxic substances.
The scale of tyre waste currently exceeds the reach of existing recycling efforts, with a substantial portion of Europe’s waste being incinerated or exported to other continents for environmentally damaging disposal, underscoring the urgent need for innovative solutions in tyre waste management.
Moreover, with the increasing adoption of electric vehicles, the tyre waste problem is set to exacerbate, as tyres used for electric vehicles wear down faster, further emphasising the need for sustainable solutions.
Here’s where CIRCTEC comes into play!
CIRCTEC: Sustainable end-of-life tyre recycling
Founded in 2009, CIRCTEC has developed a proprietary technology for decomposing old tyres through pyrolysis, a process that transforms waste into valuable circular materials through thermal decomposition in an oxygen-free environment.
Additionally, the company upgrades its products to high-quality recycled chemicals and renewable fuels.
The new Delfzijl plant is expected to be capable of reducing emissions by approximately 3% of the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire chemical industry sector of The Netherlands.
Through its pyrolysis process, CIRCTEC produces its proprietary sustainable marine fuel HUPATM, circular naphtha for responsibly sourced plastics, polymers, and chemicals, and high-quality recovered carbon black for use in tyres, rubber, and plastics manufacturing.
The CIRCTEC group has a footprint across five countries in Europe, with 2 commercial demonstration plants operating today and a third flagship scale plant under development in the Netherlands.
The company has already secured long-term offtake agreements with BP for its sustainable marine fuel and circular naphtha products, as well as with Birla Carbon, one of the largest global producers of carbon black, for the recovered carbon black.
This means that the entire output of the new plant being constructed at Delfzijl is already fully sold.
In addition to production plants, the CIRCTEC group includes design and engineering and research and development units. Its ongoing focus is not just on scaling the CIRCTEC process for chemical recycling of tyre waste but also on adapting the process to other waste feedstocks.
The investor
Novo Holdings is a holding and investment company that manages the assets and wealth of the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
In addition to managing a broad portfolio of equities, bonds, real estate, infrastructure, and private equity assets, Novo Holdings is a life sciences investor.
Through its Seeds, Venture, Growth, Asia, Bioindustrial, and Principal Investments teams, Novo Holdings invests in life science companies at all stages of development. As of year-end 2023, Novo Holdings had total assets of €149B.
Anders Spohr, Senior Partner, Bioindustrial Investments, Novo Holdings, says, “CIRCTEC is the global leader in end-of-life tyre pyrolysis, and thanks to its unmatched proprietary technology, the Company is on a rapid growth trajectory that will now be further accelerated. In addition to having a strong technology platform, the team shares Novo Holdings’ firm belief in circularity as a key component in advancing planetary health by enabling the green transition of society. I look forward to the collaboration with the CIRCTEC leadership as well as the highly esteemed investor group.”
A.P. Moller Holding is a privately held investment company based in Denmark with approximately $32B under management.
As the parent company of the A.P. Moller Group, owned by the A.P. Moller Foundation, the purpose is to build and develop businesses that have a positive impact on society.
Chetan Mehta, Head of Growth Equity, A.P. Moller Holding, says. “We are committed to investing in and building businesses with a positive impact on society. We believe CIRCTEC satisfies both our purpose and return requirements, and we are excited to be investing in the business and partnering with the management team to build a world-class pyrolysis platform.”
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