Cadel: EIC Accelerator Grant to Deink Plastic, and What Came Next

Printed plastic film is hard to recycle well: the ink stays in the melt, so the pellets come out grey, smell and end up in bin bags rather than new packaging. Cadel Deinking S.L., a company from the Valencia region, set out to wash the ink off first, using water-based chemicals instead of solvents. In the European Commission's January 2019 round of the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2, the Horizon 2020 pilot of what became the EIC Accelerator, it was selected for PLASTDEINK, according to the Commission's list of Phase 2 winners, which names Cadel as the only beneficiary of the project. The grant agreement brought an EU contribution of €1,116,244.50 towards a total cost of €1,594,635 for a 24-month project from 1 September 2019 to 31 August 2021, according to CORDIS.

The project did what it said. What followed is less usual: within 18 months of the project's end, the process, its marketing and finally its brand had passed to Keycycle, a subsidiary of the Austrian recycling machine maker EREMA, and the company had renamed itself Cadel Recycling Lab.

Where Cadel Stands Now

The legal entity that won the grant still exists and is listed as active. It was renamed from Cadel Deinking SL to Cadel Recycling Lab SL in a register entry published on 18 November 2022, and its last register publication, on 4 October 2024, appointed a new authorised signatory, according to DatosCif and North Data, which both reproduce the official gazette BORME. Infoempresa gives the company 10 to 49 employees and annual revenue below €2 million. The latest filed accounts listed by Infonif are for 2022; the figures sit behind paywalls, so revenue, losses and equity could not be checked for this article.

The deinking plants are no longer Cadel's product. Its website now offers three things: the water-based chemicals that the plants consume, R&D services, and QUANTUM, software that reads laboratory analyses of recycled plastic and flags batches with substances of concern for uses such as food packaging. Cadel says it supplies the chemicals to deinking plants in Brazil, the United States, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Turkey and is Keycycle's chemical partner, according to its chemicals page; no customer is named, and the claim could not be confirmed with Keycycle's own material. The company promoted QUANTUM at the K 2025 plastics fair in Düsseldorf, Hall 10, stand C15, on a dedicated page, and published a quality policy dated 16 March 2026. No independent report of QUANTUM sales or users was found.

The Technology: Washing Ink Off Shredded Film

The process starts from a patent filed by the University of Alicante in 2012: shredded film is stirred in an alkaline surfactant solution that lifts the ink, rinsed in two stages, and dried, while the ink is separated by centrifuge so the washing liquid can be reused. In 2017 Cadel told Resource Recycling that its roots lay in Olax22, a venture of the University of Alicante and the packaging converter Gaviplas that then owned half of Cadel, and that its pilot plant in Alicante processed 220 pounds an hour. Cadel's 2016 Phase 1 report on CORDIS describes the company as the "owner of a patent" with the same number; the public patent record names the university as applicant, and the licence terms are not public.

The alternatives Cadel compared itself with in that report were solvent-based deinking, put at €550 a tonne but with odour, colour and explosion-safety problems, and surfactant processes at €950 a tonne. Cadel claimed €831 a tonne of cleaned plastic, €669 less than virgin plastic, and the PLASTDEINK summary claims deinked plastic "45% cheaper" than virgin. These are the company's own figures; no independent cost study was found. PLASTDEINK added delamination, separating the layers of laminated film in the same wash, according to the project's final report.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What the Record Shows

PLASTDEINK set five objectives: design a 250 kg/h demonstration plant; install it and have the engineering for an industrial plant ready; define products, contracts, intellectual property and certification; prepare market entry; and validate the process on LDPE, HDPE, PP and PS film. The final report, for the period to 31 August 2021, says Cadel "achieved successfully all the objectives planned": the demonstration plant was installed, automated and validated, industrial plant engineering was ready, and the process was "validated at pre-industrial conditions with different type of plastics and different potential customers". Trade fairs were replaced by online events because of COVID-19. The project ended on its scheduled date. The only public deliverable is a data management plan, on the CORDIS results page.

The commercial record largely backs the report. EREMA began working with Cadel in June 2020, and its subsidiary Keycycle took over exclusive worldwide distribution in January 2021, including running the pilot plant in San Vicente del Raspeig with Cadel, according to Keycycle. By December 2022, eight plants had been ordered and five were running at customers' sites, Keycycle said, figures repeated by Petnology. Cadel's own history page speaks of six industrial plants sold, "the last one in Turkey". In a CORDIS interview, Rafael García said the pilot plant received weekly visits and that Cadel had signed a cooperation agreement with "a market leading recycling company".

1. 250 kg/h demonstration plantDeliveredFinal report; Keycycle ran the Alicante pilot plant with Cadel from 2021. The 250 kg/h rate is confirmed only by the company.
2. Industrial plant engineeringDeliveredEight plants ordered, five running, per Keycycle, December 2022.
3. Market entry after the projectDeliveredThrough Keycycle's exclusive distribution from January 2021, not under Cadel's own name.
4. Certification of the processPartlyCadel shows ISO 9001 and a RecyClass recycling process audit to EN 15343 on its certificates page; no certificate dates are given.
5. Validation on LDPE, HDPE, PP and PSUnverifiedThe report gives no results per polymer, and no paper or test data are public.

One aim in the report went beyond the five objectives: challenge tests "to prove the use of PLASTDEINK for food applications". No food-contact authorisation for the process was found. In the CORDIS interview, García said other contaminants besides ink would still need removing before recycled film could go back into food packaging.

The Money Around the Grant

The EIC grant was one of several public awards. Cadel was a partner in MANDALA, a Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking project on recyclable multilayer packaging that ran from June 2019 to May 2023; CORDIS lists a net EU contribution of €542,389.67 for Cadel and €5,323.33 for its linked third party OLAX 22, together €547,713, the sum North Data records, on the MANDALA fact sheet. In September 2019 the gazette recorded a Spanish regional incentive: a non-repayable grant of €549,321.35, 19% of an approved investment of €2,891,165, per DatosCif. The company's R&D projects page lists further Valencian grants, the largest €54,156.09 for removing silicone from coated PET, and three Valencian innovation agency projects from 2021 to 2026 on the quality and safety of recycled plastic, the field QUANTUM addresses.

Private investment is harder to trace. The share capital rose from €480,000 in October 2014 to €1,184,006 in June 2017 through a series of increases, according to the register entries on DatosCif and North Data; no rise has been registered since. CB Insights lists MassChallenge Switzerland, Plug and Play and Horizon 2020 as its investors, two accelerators and an EU programme; no venture round is public. Cadel is not on the EIC Fund's list of equity beneficiaries, which fits a grant-only award. What Keycycle paid for the distribution rights and the brand is not public.

What Exactly Was Sold

The sources do not agree. Keycycle's own announcement of December 2022 says it acquired "the Cadel Deinking brand" and "the trademark rights", and that "the Cadel company continues to operate as Cadel Recycling Lab". Packaging South Asia reported that Keycycle "acquired the Spanish company Cadel Deinking", which the register does not support: the same legal entity, under the same tax number, still exists under its new name with the same directors. Cadel's home page, for its part, says that "in 2021, CADEL sold the patent" to EREMA, while the patent record names the University of Alicante as applicant. This article treats the transaction as a sale of the distribution rights and brand, as Keycycle describes it.

Why It Matters for Europe

The EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, sets minimum recycled content for plastic packaging from 2030, including 10% for contact-sensitive packaging made of plastics other than PET and 35% for other plastic packaging, counted from post-consumer waste, as CMS summarises it. Printed film is a large part of that stream, and ink is one reason it is downcycled. Cadel's own reports focused on post-industrial scrap, the trimmings of printing plants; Keycycle presented its larger 1,200 kg/h line as the step towards post-consumer film. The technology was developed in Spain and is now marketed by an Austrian group, so it has stayed in Europe.

The Verdict

For a grant meant to take a technology to market, this is a better outcome than most: plants were sold within two years of the project's end. Whether Cadel itself grew could not be established, because its accounts are not freely available and the company publishes no revenue or headcount history. Cadel Recycling Lab, Keycycle and the EIC were not asked for comment for this article, which is based on public records and published statements linked throughout.