Circularise Took EIC Accelerator Cash to Trace Plastic, Then Grew

Recycled plastic looks like virgin plastic. Once it is melted into a car part or a suitcase, no test on the finished product shows how much of it was recycled, so buyers have to trust paperwork from suppliers they often do not know. Circularise, founded in 2016 as a graduation project at Delft University of Technology by Mesbah Sabur and Jordi de Vos, according to its own account, sells software that replaces that paperwork with a digital record that follows each batch of material from the chemical plant to the brand.

In the March 2020 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator pilot, the European Commission selected Circularise BV of The Hague for CirculariseSource, grant only, as the project's sole company. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,502,331 towards a total cost of €2,146,187.50, for a project from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2022. CORDIS files the grant under the SME Instrument Phase 2 funding scheme, and the company's September 2020 announcement used the same name. Six years on, the company is active, has raised an €11 million Series A and works with Honda on battery passports. Three of the more unusual promises in its EU application have no public trace.

Where Circularise Stands in 2026

The company is trading and announcing new customers. On 10 June 2026 Honda Motor Europe said it was working with Circularise on how to structure and share the digital passport that certain batteries placed on the EU market must carry from 18 February 2027, a collaboration also reported by Charged EVs. Honda's Richard Knowles said the work was helping it decide how battery information "can be structured and disclosed in a way that supports trust, usability and future scalability".

The Dutch company register shows a company in good standing. According to North Data, which draws on the KvK, Circularise B.V. (KvK 66543339) is registered at Grote Marktstraat 49 in The Hague, the same address CORDIS gives, and filed balance sheets for 2022, 2023 and 2024, the last on 1 August 2025. The figures sit behind North Data's paywall and could not be checked for this article. North Data lists no insolvency publication; the court insolvency register at insolventies.rechtspraak.nl could not be queried automatically. North Data also logs an EU Transparency Register entry for Circularise dated April 2026, and in May and September 2026 it began two new Horizon Europe projects, both on CORDIS (see below).

The Technology: Asking the Supply Chain Without Exposing It

Paper certificates for recycled content usually stop at the first supplier. The CORDIS objective claims that in 65% of cases such paper-based information sharing "doesn't even go past tier 1 suppliers". Circularise gives each batch of material a digital twin, a record of its origin, recycled share and footprint, and passes it along a blockchain as the material is processed. Its patented "Smart Questioning" method, the EU project report says, lets a buyer query a product's decentrally stored data and receive only "the data points and specificity that is necessary", so a supplier can prove a claim such as recycled content without handing over its full records or naming its own suppliers. Teijin described the method as zero-knowledge proof technology when it invested in 2024. North Data lists patent publications titled "Distributed database structures for anonymous information exchange" in 2022, 2024 and 2025.

The established route is third-party certification, such as the ISCC mass balance scheme the project report names, with audits and certificates passed from company to company. Circularise did not try to replace the auditors: the report says the software lets the plastics sector "continue working with the recognized certification institutions and auditors", and the company built mass balance bookkeeping for ISCC certification into it. Today it sells three modules, Collect for supplier data, Trace for mass balance and chain of custody, and Share for digital product passports, according to its website.

What CirculariseSource Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The objective on CORDIS promised a portal of decentralised, encrypted data that would certify recycled material along the whole supply chain without the whole chain having to cooperate. It also said "the system uses a virtual currency and chemical tracer to make supply chain transparency fraud-proof". The final report lists two further promises from the proposal: that certified recyclate would sell at a price "10% higher compared to virgin polymer resin, and double of the current market price for uncertified recyclates", and that 25% of the world's recycled polymers would be certified with Circularise's technology within five years of the project, that is by September 2027.

The final periodic report, covering September 2021 to September 2022, says the technology was scaled from technology readiness level 6 to 9, which means a system proven in operation. It names demonstrations with Neste, Philips, Arcelik, Borealis, Trinseo, Itochu, Asahi Kasei and Marubeni, integration with LyondellBasell and Neste, and customers including Samsonite and Philips. It mentions mass balance tools for ISCC and work on Ethereum to cut transaction costs. It does not mention the virtual currency or the chemical tracer again. On the 25% target, the company wrote that working with five of the 15 biggest polymer producers "makes it likely" it will be reached; on the price premium it wrote that it was "on track". Neither claim is backed by a figure in the report, and no figure has been published since.

1. Traceability and certification platform in commercial useDeliveredReport claims TRL 9; used by Porsche's suppliers in 2020 and for Samsonite luggage in 2025.
2. Mass balance certification with existing auditorsDeliveredISCC mass balance tools named in the CORDIS report; "Trace" module sold today.
3. Virtual currency for fraud-proof certificatesNot achievedAbsent from the final report; no token announced.
4. Chemical tracer in the materialNot achievedAbsent from the final report; no tracer product announced.
5. Certified recyclate 10% above virgin resin priceNot achieved"On track" per the company; no price data published.
6. 25% of global recycled polymers certified by 2027OpenDeadline not reached; no market share figure published.

The project ran on time: CORDIS shows it closed on its planned end date of 30 September 2022. The core product was built and sold. The fraud-proofing ideas that set the proposal apart, a token and a physical tracer, are the gap.

What Circularise Has Achieved Since the Award

Private money followed within two months of the project's end. On 17 November 2022 Circularise announced an €11 million Series A led by Brightlands Venture Partners, with Asahi Kasei, Neste and its existing investor 4impact capital, topped up by European Commission grants, as reported the same day by Bioenergy International. The company then had 40 employees. Renewable Carbon News carried the release on 5 December 2022, and said completion was subject to closing conditions.

Two Japanese industrial groups came in after that, without disclosed amounts. On 1 December 2023 Circularise announced a SAFE, a convertible agreement for future equity, with Sekisui Chemical, which Japan's Dempa reported as a capital and business partnership. In November 2024 Teijin made what Circularise called a strategic pre-Series B investment, dated 20 November by the company and reported by Textile World on 3 December. Both releases said the money laid the groundwork for a Series B. No Series B had been announced in any source found by October 2026.

The customer list widened from plastics to cars, aircraft, luggage and batteries. In November 2020 Porsche ran a pilot through its Startup Autobahn programme with Borealis, Covestro and Domo Chemicals to trace plastics into its cars, according to Circularise and Ledger Insights. In May 2024 the company said it had completed a proof of concept with Airbus for a digital passport of an A350-1000 cabin with 88 nodes; Airbus's own statement was not found. In April 2025 Samsonite launched two luggage collections with passports built on Circularise, and the company opened Circularise Japan K.K. in Tokyo with a grant from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, backed by Asahi Kasei, Teijin and Sekisui Chemical.

It also kept winning EU research money as a consortium partner. CORDIS lists its share of CarMine, on critical raw materials from scrapped electric vehicles, at €820,575 from September 2026; AUTONIX, on automotive remanufacturing, at €598,062.50 from May 2026; COMPASS at €569,625; and CE-RISE at €357,500. None of these approaches the size of the EIC grant.

What Cannot Be Checked

Why Europe Should Care

EU law is turning Circularise's product into an obligation. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, has been in force since 18 July 2024 and introduces a Digital Product Passport, which the Commission describes as "a digital identity card for products, components, and materials". The EU Battery Regulation requires passports for certain batteries from 18 February 2027, the deadline behind Honda's project. The Teijin and Sekisui investment announcements both cite ecodesign and sustainability reporting rules as the context.

That makes the strategic question one of who holds the data. A European company whose software lets suppliers prove recycled content without opening their books fits the EU's aim of verifiable circularity claims. It is notable that the strategic money since the EIC grant has come largely from Japanese chemical groups, and that the company's newest office is in Tokyo.

The Verdict

Circularise has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.