The chemical recycling industry has become something of a graveyard lately—Ioniqa went bust last fall, Carbios keeps pushing back deadlines—so when a Lugano-based startup announces fresh capital and a European Union grant worth tens of millions, it's worth asking what they know that others don't.
GR3N landed €15.5 million in a Series B led by 360 Capital, the company disclosed via LinkedIn on June 4, 2026. VP Textile, a newcomer to the cap table, also participated. The money will fund the company's first industrial-scale plant in Spain, a facility that has already secured up to €35 million from the EU Innovation Fund—one of the heftier cleantech awards Brussels handed out in that cycle. Whether it's enough remains an open question.
For context, GR3N's previous institutional raise was a €6.3 million Series B back in September 2021, led by Chevron Technology Ventures and Standex International. That puts the latest round at more than double, a signal of either growing confidence or escalating stakes. Since 2021, the company has moved its microwave-assisted depolymerization process from lab benches to a working demonstration unit in northern Italy, and now it's aiming to prove the economics work at 40,000 tonnes annually.
Chemistry Class, at Industrial Scale
At the heart of GR3N's pitch is a process called MADE—Microwave Assisted DEpolymerization, naturally—which uses microwave energy to power alkaline hydrolysis of PET and polyester textiles. The polymer breaks down into purified terephthalic acid and monoethylene glycol, the raw materials that can be recombined into virgin-quality PET. Unlike mechanical recycling, which grinds plastic into progressively lower-grade flakes, chemical recycling promises to restore the original quality. That's the theory, anyway.
The Spanish facility, which GR3N has branded MODUS, is being developed alongside Intecsa Industrial, an engineering firm that also holds equity in the startup. According to a July 2023 press release, engineering and construction were supposed to kick off in the fourth quarter of 2024. The plant is now targeting full operation in 2027, a timeline that reflects either careful planning or the inevitable slippage that accompanies first-of-a-kind industrial builds. It will process around 50,000 tonnes of textile and packaging waste each year. GR3N claims the facility could avoid two million tonnes of CO₂ over its lifetime, though independent lifecycle assessments remain under wraps.
The Public Money Question
The EU Innovation Fund's commitment—up to €35 million—speaks to Brussels' urgency around circular economy mandates and textile waste targets. Member states are scrambling to meet quotas, and chemical recycling infrastructure has emerged as a potential answer, even if the sector's track record is mixed.
GR3N has layered that public capital on top of earlier grant funding from the European Innovation Council, which handed the company roughly $2.68 million in April 2022, according to Crunchbase. (Exact instrument details are harder to pin down.) The company says its MADE technology can process "100% of PET waste" and cut emissions by "up to 80 percent compared to virgin PET," claims that would be easier to evaluate if those lifecycle assessments were public.
From Demo Plant to the Real Thing
GR3N's demonstration facility in northern Italy began processing PET in March 2024, handling around 60 kilograms per hour. One advantage: the system can tolerate feedstock purities as low as 70 percent, which matters when you're dealing with contaminated post-consumer textiles or colored bottles that stymie enzymatic or mechanical approaches. Schneider Electric signed on last September to automate the Spanish plant, using open automation standards to smooth the transition from pilot to production.
Maurizio Crippa, GR3N's founder and CEO, started the company in 2011 and has spent the past decade navigating EU-funded consortia and incremental pilots. The Spain plant is the first full-scale test of whether microwave-assisted chemistry can compete on cost and throughput with established methanolysis processes—Eastman's approach—or the enzymatic route that Carbios is pursuing. The answer will shape more than just GR3N's future.
A Sector Under Pressure
GR3N's fundraise lands in the middle of what can only be described as a difficult stretch for chemical recycling. Ioniqa, a Dutch competitor that also focused on PET depolymerization, filed for bankruptcy in October 2024 after failing to secure financing for its industrial plant. Carbios has hit permitting delays and schedule shifts on its Longlaville facility in France. Eastman's methanolysis plant at Port-Jérôme is progressing toward phase-one mechanical completion in 2026, though questions linger around feedstock logistics and the sheer capital intensity of the project.
Switzerland's DePoly raised CHF 12.3 million in seed funding in June 2023 and began building a showcase plant in Monthey in 2024, adding yet another contender to an already crowded field. Glycolysis, methanolysis, enzymatic processing, microwave-assisted hydrolysis—each pathway comes with its own feedstock tolerances, capital requirements, and energy footprints. None has definitively cracked the code on scalable, economically viable recycling.
For GR3N, the next eighteen months matter. The €15.5 million from private investors, stacked on top of up to €35 million from the EU, buys the company time to find out whether its dual bet—on microwave chemistry and textile feedstocks—can set it apart in a market still searching for answers. The industry has seen plenty of promising pilots. What it needs now are plants that actually work, at scale, without subsidy life support. GR3N is about to find out if it can deliver.
