Novolup makes a lot of plastic

Plastic has a recycling problem. Only about 9 % Plastic is recycled, and Majority From these waste comes from the elements of individual use such as plastic groceries. It is a partial design problem – it is ignored. But it is also a technology problem because recycling of such films is not easy, and the results are usually great.

Novolup He says she has developed a way to take these annoying plastic materials and turn them into something that other companies really want.

The California starting startup recently recently completed a test of the constantly lost plastic. The factory is able to get rid of polyurethane at heat (TPU) up to 70 metric tons annually can be used in everything from sports shoes to the car seats. The demand was strong enough so that the company prepared plans for a larger attachment.

“We have been sold literally every time we make something, we sell us,” Miranda Wang, co -founder and CEO of Novolup, told Techcrunch.

In the aftermath of the trial production, the Novolooop BB series raised $ 21 million to finish the design of its first commercial factory and start construction. The new tour led TARANIS, an investment fund for Perenco Oil and Gas, with the participation of Valo Ventures and Shop Limited.

The company does not have a site chosen for its commercial factory, but it looks forward to construction alongside a current chemical factory that may have land and additional facilities. The other company may own and operate the facility, while providing Novolup for the process and marketing knowledge.

“Sometimes it is difficult for them to face growth opportunities,” Wang said. “This is a way for them to reach this opportunity to grow while not having to learn a completely different market, they have to sell things to it because we take care of marketing, sales and technology.”

Novolup has already raised Series of 21 million dollarsAnd that helped the company improve its process to the point where the manufacture of shoes is used for its fake materials for its jurist Cloudprime shoes.

The materials that revolve around the startup, which are called the rounded TPU (polyurethane with heat), are manufactured by shattering polyethylene plastic into basic building blocks, which are called monomeria. From there, it collects new polymers that are more valuable than the first polyethylene. Wang said that the resulting material is more expensive than the Virgin, but “within the scope.”

Wang added that the NOVOLOP experience with TPU led the company to another business line, recycling TPU mechanically from the factory floors and adding “performance enhancements” to make them perform more similar to virgin materials.

When it was time to build the demonstration factory, Novolup presented a facility in the United States, but it quickly settled on India, as Aether Industries was not a pilot factory but a “pilot factory”, Wang said. “They have a plant of a whole group of pilots.”

Aether’s experience with small chemical manufacturing factories-besides its ability to re-use the equipment from accredited pilots-means that building and operating the Novoloob factory will cost ten times the mere building of the small facility in the United States

“This is an environment that we do not have here,” Wang said.