UK-based Circular11 secures €2.7 million to turn low-grade plastic waste into building materials

Circular11, a Dorset-based startup turning low-grade plastic waste into building materials and home products, has secured €2.7 million (£2.4 million) in equity funding to bring its manufacturing technology to market and ramp up its production of waste-based materials. 

The company aims to recycle an estimated 10,000 tonnes of low-quality plastic over the next two years. The investment has been led by Vectr7 Investment Partners, a specialist climate impact investor, with The FSE Group, which invested €728.1k (£630k) from the British Business Bank’s South West Investment Fund, acting as co-lead. The round also included The FSE Investor Network, Oxford Innovation Network, and other private investors, alongside an InnovateUK grant award. 

Benjamin Gibbons, CEO of Circular 11, said, “We believe that every tonne of plastic that gets incinerated is a missed opportunity to deliver low-carbon materials to a construction sector that desperately needs affordable and long-lasting assets. The backing of Vectr7, the South West Investment Fund, FSE and other investors is an important step; it gives us the resources to scale manufacturing, whilst continuing to develop the systems behind our materials and respond to growing pressure on industry to find better uses for plastic waste.”

Circular11 was founded in 2021 by Gibbons and Connor Winter after working on a waste management project in Nepal, where they witnessed the impact of waste burning on the families they lived with. The company transforms waste-bound plastic into low-carbon fencing, furniture, and landscaping products for the construction and estates sectors.

According to the company, most plastics go to waste because recyclers cannot separate them back to their original levels of purity, making them too unreliable to be used by normal manufacturing systems. Circular11 claims that its proprietary technology allows its manufacturing lines to adapt to this variation, making plastics usable in the company’s production of composite lumber, an alternative to timber.

The UK startup states that the demand for this kind of sustainable outdoor material is being driven by the growth of timber demand, which is set to outstrip slow-growing supply threefold over the next few decades. This is compounded by the banning of traditional timber preservatives, which shortens timber lifespans and necessitates alternative materials. 

Lumber composites offer longer lifespans and lower maintenance costs, while diverting plastic waste from incineration and reducing the carbon footprint of construction projects.

The company transforms waste using three steps. The first step involves collecting directly from companies and communities with problem plastics, or working with sorting facilities that have large volumes of plastic that cannot be separated or resold. It quantifies how much plastic would have gone to incineration or landfill. 

Next, it shreds this material down and creates a chemical profile of it so that the data can be fed into its machine learning algorithms. These work out the optimal formulation for each waste stream. After this, the material goes through in-house strength testing to guarantee product quality.

Lastly, it uses a process called extrusion to create plastic lumber, which it then makes into finished products. Circular 11 uses its own digital operating system to track what plastic streams end up in each individual product, along with the carbon used and diverted in its production.

In 2023, the company raised €578k (£500k) to set up a full-scale recycling and manufacturing facility in Dorset, England, and developed a machine learning-led approach to manufacturing with low-grade waste streams.

“The supply side constraints within the timber markets means the construction and manufacturing industries need sustainable alternatives. Circular 11 is addressing that critical need head on and we are excited about the next stage of their growth,” said Dominic Wilson, founder and Managing Partner at Vectr7 Investment Partners.

Circular11’s mission is to create a scalable recycling technology that can be deployed anywhere in the world in order to capture the millions of tonnes of plastic currently being incinerated or dumped and turn it into a material for good.

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