GR3N has closed a €15.5 million Series B led by 360 Capital to advance its microwave-based chemical PET recycling technology and fund construction of MODUS, the world’s first industrial plant using this process.

The company’s MADE technology can process 100% of PET waste — including coloured bottles, films, and textiles that mechanical recycling cannot touch — reducing CO₂ emissions by up to 80% versus virgin PET.

EU regulations require producers to meet 30% recycled PET content by 2030 and 65% by 2040, creating a structural demand gap that mechanical recycling alone cannot fill. Chemical recycling is the only technology capable of meeting it at scale.

Recycling has a dirty secret. Of the 100 million tonnes of PET produced globally every year, mechanical recycling — the dominant technology — can only process transparent and light-blue bottles. That is 15% of the total. The remaining 85% — coloured packaging, films, blended textiles, contaminated waste — goes straight to landfill or incineration. For 13 years, Swiss cleantech company GR3N has been building the technology to fix that.

Lugano-based GR3N, founded in 2013, has closed a €15.5 million Series B led by 360 Capital, the Paris and Milan-based deep-tech and climate-tech VC. VP Textile joins as a new strategic investor. The round brings GR3N’s total funding to approximately €24 million across all rounds. Growth Capital acted as financial advisor.

Leadership transition

The funding announcement coincides with a significant leadership change: Maurizio Crippa, the Italian inventor who founded GR3N and served as CEO since 2013, has handed over the role to Martin Stephan, who brings over two decades of international executive experience in technology-driven businesses. Crippa invented the MADE technology and has guided the company from laboratory concept to industrial development — Stephan now takes it into the commercialisation phase.

What MADE does

GR3N’s core technology is MADE — Microwave Assisted DEpolymerization. Rather than physically shredding or melting plastic (mechanical recycling) or using enzymes or solvents (competing chemical approaches), MADE uses microwave energy to break PET and polyester down into their core monomers — terephthalic acid (TPA) and monoethylene glycol (MEG) — at the molecular level. The resulting monomers are food-grade, virgin-quality, and can be re-polymerised into new PET endlessly without degradation. Unlike glycolysis, methanolysis, or dissolution approaches, MADE has no feedstock limitations: it handles coloured bottles, textile fibres, films, and contaminated mixed streams that defeat every other method.

The process reduces CO₂ emissions by up to 80% compared to producing virgin PET from fossil feedstocks. GR3N holds three patent families — two covering the depolymerisation process and one on its proprietary equipment (PEQ). The team comprises six PhDs with backgrounds spanning material science, chemistry, aerospace engineering, and economics. Industrial shareholders include Intecsa Industrial, Standex International, and Chevron.

MODUS — the world’s first industrial plant

The proceeds from this round go directly toward MODUS — a first-of-a-kind industrial plant with a capacity of 40,000 tonnes per year, to be built in Spain in partnership with Intecsa Industrial, the engineering arm of the Cobra IS industrial group, which leads the EPC execution. The project has secured a signed €35 million grant agreement under the EU Innovation Fund’s Large Scale Industrial Projects category — more than double the equity raised in this round, reflecting the EU’s conviction that chemical recycling infrastructure needs public subsidy to reach viability. Financial closure is expected in Q4 2027, with commercial operations planned for Q2 2030.

It is worth noting that MODUS was originally targeted for operation in 2027 when announced in 2023. The current timeline of Q2 2030 represents a three-year delay — a common pattern in first-of-a-kind deep-tech industrial projects where engineering complexity, regulatory approvals, and supply chain realities routinely extend timelines beyond initial projections, according to Dealroom.

In their own words

“I am very excited to join this talented team with the goal to bring the Microwave Assisted Depolymerisation technology to the market and make it the Best Available Technology for PET chemical recycling.” — Martin Stephan, CEO, GR3N.

“Textile waste is one of the most urgent, and most unsolved, problems in the sustainability transition. The fashion industry generates over 90 million tons of waste annually, polyester dominates global fiber production, and yet less than 1% of clothing is ever recycled back into clothing. The loop has never been closed because the technology to close it didn’t exist. Until now.” — Alessandro Zaccaria, Partner, 360 Capital.

The competitive landscape

GR3N competes in a crowded but technically fragmented chemical recycling field. Carbios, the French enzymatic depolymerisation company listed on Euronext Growth, is building a 50,000-tonne commercial plant in partnership with Indorama Ventures, targeting operations in the mid-2020s — it uses biological enzymes rather than microwaves and has raised over €200 million. DePoly, a fellow Swiss PET chemical recycler that has raised $41 million total, opened a 500-tonne demonstration plant in Monthey, Switzerland in 2025 using a cold-temperature acid hydrolysis process — different chemistry, similar feedstock flexibility. Loop Industries (Canada, $139 million raised) uses low-temperature, low-pressure depolymerisation targeting the North American market. What differentiates GR3N is the microwave energy mechanism — which the company says enables faster reaction times, higher energy efficiency, and full feedstock flexibility without the enzyme sourcing constraints of Carbios or the solvent handling requirements of dissolution approaches.

Market context

According to Grand View Research, the global chemical recycling of plastics market was valued at $14.82 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $26.88 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 9.4%. Within that, the PET-specific chemical recycling segment is growing faster — projected to reach $9.5 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 14.5%, driven directly by the EU regulatory mandates and brand commitments that GR3N’s technology is designed to serve.

The harder question for GR3N — and for every company in this space — is not whether the chemistry works. It does. The question is whether a 40,000-tonne plant in Spain, operational in 2030, can demonstrate economics competitive with virgin PET at a moment when oil prices, energy costs, and regulatory enforcement timelines all remain outside anyone’s control. MODUS will be the first proof point. The industry is watching.