Circularise, a provider of digital product passports and mass balance bookkeeping software, has secured €11m ($13m) in funding as part of its Series A round. The funding will be used to advance the company's mission of bringing a circular economy to industrial supply chains. Circularise's blockchain-based digital product passports enable customers to improve resource use, verify provenance, and conduct carbon footprint and impact assessments across supply chains. The company also recently launched MassBalancer, a solution for mass balance bookkeeping in the plastic and chemicals industry. The funding round was led by Brightlands Venture Partners and included industry players Asahi Kasei and Neste.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Digital product passports and mass balance bookkeeping software provider Circularise announces that it secured €11 million in funding as part of its Series A round that will be used to advance its mission to bring a circular economy to industrial supply chains. This capital injection was led by Brightlands Venture Partners joined by industry players Asahi Kasei, Neste, as well as existing investor 4impact capital and is supplemented with grants from the European Commission.
The company's mission is to support the shift from a linear to a circular economy. With its blockchain-based digital product passports, Circularise enables customers to improve resource use, verify provenance, conduct carbon footprint and impact assessments across supply chains. This is especially relevant in complex supply chains such as those of chemicals, plastics, metals, and critical raw materials, but also automotive, electronics, packaging or construction.
Additionally, the company recently launched MassBalancer, its solution for mass balance bookkeeping, in order to support the shift from fossil feedstocks to sustainable alternatives in the plastic and chemicals industry.
Circularise’s co-founder Jordi de Vos says: “We’re happy to welcome Brightlands Venture Partners, 4impact, Neste and Asahi Kasei as our investors. 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.”
Circularise was founded in 2016 by Mesbah Sabur and Jordi de Vos at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). Over the last six years, with the support of the EIT Raw Materials, the European Commission, angel investors, and now VC’s, the company grew to 40 people, expanded to international markets such as Japan, joined the collaborative ecosystem Catena-X to strengthen a secure data exchange in the automotive industry and partnered with multinational companies including Asahi Kasei, Covestro, Domo Chemicals, Marubeni, Mitsubishi Chemicals, Neste, LyondellBasell, Philips Domestic Appliances, Porsche, Trinseo.
What separates Circularise from other players in the digital product passports market is its focus on helping suppliers to share sensitive data, like material composition, environmental footprint or LCA data, without risking privacy and confidentiality. It achieves this with its patent pending Smart Questioning technology, which allows suppliers to be in control of which data they want to share.
By extension, Circularise helps brands and OEM’s to get visibility into their own Scope 3 emissions and other metrics, enabling them to improve sustainability, compliance, and meet customer demand and regulatory requirements around Digital Product Passports, the SEC’s proposed climate risk disclosure rules, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
Unlike its competitors Circularise’s software uses a public blockchain instead of a private one which enables an unparalleled level of verification of correctness of data - and therefore trust - while maintaining data privacy and preventing high energy consumption.
“Brightlands Venture Partners is excited to lead this Series A round with such a strong consortium of VC’s and industry players. 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” says Mary McCarthy, Partner at Brightlands Venture Partners.
The agreement about capital injection has been signed, and the completion of the investment is subject to customary closing conditions
Quotes from other investors
"Together with partners, Neste leads the way in accelerating the transition towards more sustainable solutions for polymers and chemicals. There is an urgent need for new scalable, end-to-end digital solutions to trace renewable and recycled material flows, providing increased transparency along the value chains. Circularise provides novel solutions for this need, and we are excited to support them in speeding up the critical transition to circular solutions'' Lars Peter Lindfors, Neste’s Senior Vice President, Innovation
Through collaboration with Circularise, we, Asahi Kasei, expect to contribute to building a transparent supply chain as a supplier’s responsibility and shift to a circular economy by promoting utilisation of products made from biomass and recycled raw materials.”Takashi Morishita, President of CVC at Asahi Kasei
"The Circularise team is and continues to be the leader in blockchain for sustainability and traceability. 4impact has been an early investor and supporter and we are thrilled to continue on our joint journey towards a circular economy. Circularise’s proprietary technology coupled with the team’s expertise and unwavering commitment will enable complex value chains to be reformed to more environmentally friendly and cost-effective ways. ”Ali Najafbagy, Managing Partner and co-founder of 4impact capital