Samsara Eco, an Australian environmental technology company, has received $65 million in funding from Temasek, the state investor of Singapore.
Main Sequence, an Australian deep tech investment fund, is also leading the round, according to a statement released by Samsara Eco on Thursday.
The round also included participation from a group of new and returning backers, including Wollemi Capital, lululemon, Hitachi Ventures, Titanium Ventures (previously Telstra Ventures), and DCVC.
According to Samsara Eco, the financing moves the company one step closer to getting rid of plastic waste and making sure it never ends up in a landfill or is burned.
According to the statement, the funding will enable the business to expand its enzymatic recycling capabilities. In the coming years, new commercial facilities will be constructed in South East Asia.
In order to create tens of thousands of tons of monomers—the molecular building blocks of plastics—from millions of tons of recycled plastic waste, including discarded textiles and packaging, the facilities will create a truly circular loop.
The business will also expand its library of enzymes that break down plastic and grow its worldwide staff of technicians, engineers, and chemists.
“Plastics have been an environmental disaster with almost every piece of the 9 billion tons ever made still on the planet,
“But almost all plastic is reusable and recyclable with the right technology. We’re on a mission to end plastic waste and with it, repair our climate, said Paul Riley, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Samsara Eco.
“The ability to infinitely recycle plastic in an environmentally friendly way is a game changer for brands and our planet,
“Our enzymatic recycling technology makes it easy for brands in almost every industry to meet their sustainability and decarbonization goals by creating a circular loop for plastics. We’ve already made significant traction in the textile space but this is just the beginning,” he added.
Ever since its 2020 launch, Samsara Eco has been at the forefront of innovations in infinite recycling, having been the first to recycle plastics such as polyester and nylon 6.6.
The company earlier this year, in collaboration with its first textile partner, unveiled the world’s first enzymatically recycled nylon 6,6 product and assisted in the launch of lululemon’s first enzymatically recycled polyester product.
Notably, the company’s proprietary recycling technology, called EosEco, combines computer science, biology, chemistry, and biophysics to produce a family of enzymes that consume plastic.
