“Circularise Plastics”, a project using blockchain technology to set up an open-source protocol for tracking the supply chain in the plastics industry, has received EUR 1.5m from the European Commission’s “H2020 SME Instrument Phase 2” to fund its next stage of growth. The funding is seen as a big step forward to scale up the project in order to achieve its goal of creating a plastics industry standard for a secure and open system for global supply chains.

Over the last four years since start-up Circularise (The Hague / The Netherlands; www.circularise.com) launched its project, the company said it has proven that blockchain is a strong enabler for all the data, documents and information exchanges happening within complex supply chains while safeguarding sensitive data. Together with polyamide producer Covestro (Leverkusen / Germany; www.covestro.com) and engineering plastics producer Domo Chemicals (Leuna / Germany; www.domochemicals.com), the first version of the Circularise Plastics systems was built and tested.

In spring 2020, Circularise was selected for an acceleration programme by the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW; www.endplasticwaste.org), which recently published its “2020 Progress Report" (see Plasteurope.com of 11.09.2020).