UBQ Materials lands US$70M in funding for global expansion

14 Sep 2023 --- Israel-based UBQ Materials has raised US$70 million in a financing round led by Eden Global Partners. The investment will support the company’s commercial, sales and marketing scale-up throughout Europe and North America as part of a continuing global expansion. 

The company creates bio-based thermoplastic – UBQ – from residual household waste diverted from landfills or incineration, including all organics, into a recyclable alternative for fossil fuel-based plastics. 

Additional participants in the financing were return investors in the company, including TPG Rise Climate, TPG’s Rise Fund, Battery Ventures and M&G’s Catalyst strategy.

UBQ Materials is currently working on opening an industrial-scale facility in Bergen Op Zoom, Netherlands. The facility will have an annual production capacity of 80,000 metric tons of UBQ, converting 104,600 metric tons of waste annually into a new raw material.

“One of the major problems with plastics, and specifically packaging, is that because these are difficult-to-recycle materials, they end up in landfills and contaminate our environment,” Jack ‘Tato’ Bigio, co-founder and co-CEO of UBQ Materials, tells Packaging Insights.

The company claims that its waste provessing technology could end global landfilling entirely if adopted at scale.“According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, over half of municipal solid waste comes from food packaging alone. The UBQ process allows for these materials to be upcycled within the mixed waste stream, creating an end-of-life solution that did not previously exist.”

Broadening materials 
Over 3 billion tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) is expected to be produced annually by 2050, while current approaches to waste management continue to contribute to climate change, says the company. 

Landfills are the third largest human source of methane, a GHG 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over 20 years, while incineration emits 1.7 kg CO2eq for every kilogram of MSW incinerated. 

Every kilogram of UBQ replaces 1 kg of oil-based plastic, diverts 1.3 kg of waste from landfills and incinerators, and prevents up to 11.7 kg of CO2eq emissions measured over a 20-year time horizon, claims the company. 

“The funding is aimed at fuelling our expansion efforts and the challenges attached to it – namely, creating a bigger organization in terms of people, international operations, new material developments and adjacent activities,” says Bigio. 

“UBQ is composed of a team of highly experienced and seasoned professionals who have scaled operations in the past, and together with our first-line partners’ support, we expect to get through all these challenges in the best way.”

An end to landfilling? 
Some major industry brands have integrated UBQ into durable and semi-durable products such as car parts, footwear, pallets, display stands, panelsand planters, with customers including Mercedes-Benz, PepsiCo and McDonald’s.

Recently, the company announced the expansion of its partnership with Arcos Dorados, a McDonald’s franchisee, to provide it with connection boxes and modular wood boards. 

UBQ is expanding in terms of product variety and applications, says Bigio.

“With our existing applications alone, if the world decided to shift to our climate-positive material in place of resource-intensive and finite resources, we could be done with all of the world’s waste, looping it into a circular economy where nothing is wasted. We can get there, and that is why this expansion is so important.” 

By Louis Gore-Langton

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