MacroCycle raises $6.5M to commercialise upcycling technology with 80% less energy
MacroCycle Technologies, a developer of a novel PET & polyester textile waste upcycling technology, announced the close of a $6.5M seed financing round. The round was led by Clean Energy Ventures and Volta Circle, with participation from KDT Ventures and Neotribe Ventures. MacroCycle will use the funding to grow its operations by 50% and scale its pilot plant facilities to develop its upcycled PET & polyester resin with initial customers.
Modern approaches to recycling break down plastic waste into the molecular building blocks of plastic (monomers) or back to fossil fuels. These processes require a significant amount of energy, which limits their competitiveness with fossil fuel-derived plastic production. Without breaking down the plastic, MacroCycle’s breakthrough technology upgrades plastic waste into its previous high-quality “virgin-grade” form. Their innovative chemistry and selective non-toxic reagents afford a simpler process that requires 80% less energy than fossil-based PET production and 50-75% lower capital expenditure than competing chemical or biologic recycling methods.
“There is a $700 billion linear plastics market opportunity, but today’s advanced recycling technologies are too expensive to build and operate, and still yield low-value products. MacroCycle’s technology provides a more efficient process to produce high-quality plastic that can be adopted as a drop-in solution competitive with fossil fuel-based plastic,” said MacroCycle CEO Stwart Peña Feliz. “Our technology will be a key enabler for plastic circularity, as we allow our customers and suppliers to unlock the economic benefits of recycling.”
The groundwork for MacroCycle’s technology was laid during the academic work of Dr. Jan-Georg Rosenboom, co-founder and CTO of MacroCycle, and his colleagues at MIT, ETH Zurich and Politecnico Di Milano. With early support from the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program, MacroCycle scaled up its technology 100x from lab-scale beakers to a pilot plant reactor running at The Engine Accelerator’s facilities.
Macrocycle is expected to recycle PET bottles and polyester textile waste from customers in the cosmetics, textiles, home goods, food and beverage industries with large packaging waste footprints as well as luxury and fast fashion clothing brands. To address demand for its PET product, MacroCycle’s first pilot plant will support large-scale product validation and produce the first bottles and garments made entirely from MacroCycle’s recycled PET resin.
Photo top: MacroCycle Co-Founders, Jan-Georg Rosenboom, PhD (left) and Stwart Peña Feliz (right)