Samsara Eco

About

Samsara Eco develops enzyme-based processes and fossil-free polymer resins that depolymerize polyester and nylons (including nylon 6/6), builds commercial recycling facilities, and offers contamination-tolerant partner testing.

Mission

Samsara Eco develops and sells fossil-free polymer resins and enzyme-based recycling technology (EosEco) intended to replace fossil fuel–derived plastics in packaging, textiles and other products. The company has built an enzyme library that can recycle polyester, nylon 6 and the more difficult nylon 6,6, and it launched its first product made from enzymatically recycled polyester in partnership with Lululemon. Samsara is constructing facilities in Jerrabomberra, New South Wales to provide partner testing and creation services, and plans additional facilities in Southeast Asia and its first North American facility. It was founded in 2020 in collaboration with the Australian National University, Woolworths and Main Sequence and currently employs about 60 staff across Australia and North America, with plans to expand headcount to 90 by the end of 2025. The company says its EosEco process operates at lower temperature and pressure than conventional recycling and achieves a life-cycle assessment well below the carbon footprint of virgin plastics. Samsara aims to scale to recycling 1.5 million tonnes of plastic per year by 2030 and is targeting expansion into apparel, consumer packaged goods, automotive and electronics sectors. Samsara Eco develops enzyme-based technology that rapidly depolymerizes plastics into their core molecules, enabling repeated recycling. The company launched last year in partnership with the Australian National University and has expanded an enzyme library now capable of depolymerizing several plastic types. It plans to build its first commercial recycling facility in Melbourne later this year, targeting full-scale production by 2023 and claiming the facility will infinitely recycle 20,000 tons of plastic starting in 2024. Initial processing will focus on PET and polyester, and the technology is described as tolerant of contamination and able to handle colored, mixed and multi-layered plastics. Samsara says the new funding will be used to expand its enzyme library, fund the commercial facility, grow its engineering team and expand operations into Europe and North America. The company is preparing to launch enzymatically recycled packaging with Woolworths next year and aims to recycle 1.5 million tons of plastic per year by 2030, with Woolworths committed to turning the first 5,000 tons into branded packaging. Samsara Eco has developed an enzyme-based process that breaks plastics into their molecular building blocks (monomers) for infinite recycling or upcycling. The company says its process achieves full depolymerization in about an hour at room temperature and can be run in a carbon-neutral way, saving an estimated three tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of plastic recycled. Launched in 2021, Samsara has a 13-person team of scientists, engineers and researchers, including collaborators from the Australian National University. It has commercial partnerships with Woolworths Group, which committed to using the first 5,000 tonnes of recycled Samsara plastic in own-brand packaging, and with Tennis Australia to recycle 5,000 bottles. Samsara raised $6 million to build its first recycling plant later this year and expects full-scale production to start in 2023; it is targeting an additional roughly $50 million raise later this year to fund a first commercial-scale facility to recycle 20,000 tonnes per annum. Investors named in the current raise include the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), W23 and Main Sequence.

Quick Facts