Circularise raises €11m in round backed by Asahi Kasei

Dutch supply chain traceability startup Circularise has raised €11m to help fund further development of its blockchain-powered platform in a first-round financing.

The round – backed by Japanese industrial group Asahi Kasei, sustainable fuel company Neste, and investment groups Brightlands and 4impact Capital – will be used by the company as it develops platforms for "accelerating the shift towards a circular economy through supply chain traceability and transparency," according to co-founder Jordi de Vos.

Circularise specialises in "digital passports" that can be used to provide visibility in complex supply chains, such as chemicals, plastics, metals, and critical raw materials, automotive, electronics, packaging and construction.

The company recently launched MassBalancer, a tool for mass balance bookkeeping - a chain of custody approach that allows tracking the net amount of sustainable materials as they move through a system or supply chain – in order to support the shift from fossil feedstocks to sustainable alternatives in the plastic and chemicals industry.

"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," commented Lars Peter Lindfors, Neste's head of innovation.

"Circularise provides novel solutions for this need, and we are excited to support them in speeding up the critical transition to circular solutions," he added.

Asahi Kasei meanwhile said it planned to work with the startup to promote utilisation of products made from biomass and recycles raw materials.

"Circularise has developed a highly reliable supply chain management system that achieves both data anonymity and transparency using blockchain technology, said the Japanese firm in a statement.

By doing so, various information on raw materials, recycling history, biomass and recycling content, carbon footprint, third-party certification, etc. can be traced through the supply chain while maintaining the confidentiality of each stakeholder's information."