Circular.co, a sustainable sourcing platform, has secured $10.5M (approximately €9.7M) in funding to bolster its database of post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials and enhance its platform for streamlined buying and selling.
The financing comprises a new $5.3M round, supported by Maniv, Oxygea, and Eclipse, following a $5.2M seed round led by Eclipse.
Circular, launched in 2022, is a sustainable sourcing platform that simplifies the trade of post-consumer recycled materials through a vast curated database.
Capital utilisation
With this funding, Circular.co plans to grow its team, diversify into other sustainable materials, onboard more companies and suppliers, and enhance the scale and functionality of its platform.
The newly enhanced platform offers a self-serve Explore tool to access PCR materials globally, a Search feature facilitating direct buyer-supplier connections, and Procure support for testing, onboarding, contracting, carbon footprinting, and freight management.
In Q4 2023 alone, Circular sourced 35,000 tons of post-consumer recycled material, valued at $43M, supporting nine global brands across four continents, and saving companies over 10 per cent on average compared to market prices.
With new funding, Circular plans to expand within its industry, grow internationally, and add sustainable materials like paper and metals.
Making sustainable sourcing easier with data
Leading companies and consumer brands are racing to meet plastic reduction and net-zero emissions targets by 2025 and 2030, as mandated by international agreements from the United Nations.
Currently, signatories to plastic reduction commitments like The Global Commitment led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation are likely to miss 2025 targets. Additionally, only 18 per cent of companies are on track for net-zero emissions by 2050, according to Accenture.
Sustainability and procurement teams face challenges due to the fragmented PCR market, leading to issues with price, quality, availability, and access, hindering progress toward their goals.
Aidan Madigan-Curtis, Partner at Eclipse, says, “Many of the global Fortune 500 have set aggressive targets to use up to 50 per cent ‘recycled resin in the coming 3-5 years.”
“Globally, we manufacture north of 400 million tons of plastic goods per year, which will require not only a mind-bending amount of PCR to source but a complete overhaul of the supply chains and manufacturing processes used to procure plastic in order to meet these targets.”
“In a world where procurement and product teams are expected to reimagine their supply chains almost overnight, Circular is the only single-pane-of-glass solution that can streamline the vendor identification, supplier qualification, specification standardisation, quality assurance, and logistics to create consistency of supply, price, and quality to make PCR possible.”
Circular provides access to a vast network of over 9,000 global suppliers and offers more than 50,000 PCR technical records, all curated using AI. This streamlined approach replaces the traditional analog methods, delivering results in days rather than months or years.
Ian Arthurs, founder and CEO of Circular, says, “Buyers transitioning to recycled materials face the typical challenges of an emerging, analog market rife with inefficiency and a lack of transparency. They can’t find the material they need, and if they can find it, it’s too expensive – and if they can afford it, there are often quality or consistency issues.”
“Existing relationship-driven systems fail to provide the information necessary for buyers to make fast informed decisions, and on the flip side, suppliers have a hard time being discovered by and getting access to serious buyers. Circular unblocks these common issues using data and technology to help buyers and sellers navigate the global market efficiently.”
“Armed with our data, buyers and suppliers make faster and smarter business decisions and simplify their process to get sustainable materials into production now,” adds Arthurs.
