The European Commission has announced that the European Investment Fund (EIF, Luxembourg; www.eif.org) has contributed EUR 50 mn in financing to the Circular Plastics Fund managed by Dutch investment firm Infinity Recycling (Rotterdam; https://infinity-recycling.com).

The EIF is part of the European Investment Bank (EIB; Luxembourg, www.eib.com), the lending arm of the EU, and the investment covers a third of the Luxembourg-based fund’s initial target of EUR 150 mn, according to the commission. It noted that the agreement was made possible with the support of the InvestEU programme, which aims to unlock over EUR 372 bn in additional investment from 2021 to 2027.

“We are thrilled by this investment from the EIF, which pushes our Circular Plastics Fund beyond the EUR 105 mn threshold and empowers us to accelerate circularity in the plastics industry through an impact-driven strategy,” said Jeroen Kelder, a managing partner at Infinity Recycling.

“We expect to reach final close by the end of this year at or above our target fund size of EUR 150 mn,” Kelder told Plasteurope.com. “There is a lot of interest from predominantly large institutional investors.”

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The fund aims to back so-called advanced plastics recycling technologies such as chemical reclaim. Last year, it announced an EUR 5 mn investment in a commercial-scale plant for chemical recycling in the Netherlands. 

“For most Europeans recycling is already an integral part of their daily lives,” said Virginijus Sinkevicius, European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries. “Establishing a true circular economy also requires industrial solutions that allow plastics to be recycled fully, efficiently and many times over.”