Bridgend-based Reclinker has closed an oversubscribed £10m Series A co-led by Clean Growth Fund and AP Ventures, with the Development Bank of Wales joining the cap table. The Cambridge spinout plans to scale production in Cardiff towards 120,000 tonnes a year.
Reclinker makes low-carbon cement clinker from construction demolition waste. Its process, developed at the University of Cambridge, recovers used cement paste and reactivates it inside the electric arc furnaces that steelmakers already use to recycle scrap.
The company has now raised £10m in an oversubscribed Series A equity round. Clean Growth Fund and AP Ventures co-led, with the Development Bank of Wales participating as a new investor.
Existing shareholders Zero Carbon Capital, Kibo Invest and Cambridge Enterprise followed on. The valuation and the size of individual cheques were not disclosed.
The capital follows industrial-scale trials at 7 Steel UK's electric arc furnace in Cardiff. Reclinker says it has already made its first commercial sales.
Proceeds will take Cardiff production towards 120,000 tonnes a year. The company also intends to replicate the model at other electric arc furnace sites in Europe and the US.
The pitch to investors rests on capital efficiency. Because the process runs on steel plant equipment that already exists, Reclinker does not need to build kilns, which the company says keeps the capital required to scale comparatively low.
Cement accounts for roughly 7% of global CO2 emissions, about three times the share of aviation. Most of that comes from clinker: around 53% of its emissions arise from the calcination of limestone and a further 35% from fossil fuels burned in kilns.
Reclinker's route is electrically driven and uses no kiln, no quarried limestone and no fossil-fuelled heat. The resulting material is sold in blended cement products that the company expects to cut emissions by 50% immediately, at cost parity with conventional cement.
Demand has been signalled through Innovate UK's advance market commitment, under which large concrete users have stated their intention to buy significant volumes of low-carbon clinker over the next five years.
Chief executive Bill Yost said the oversubscribed round showed UK investors were serious about decarbonisation. Gareth Mayhead of the Development Bank of Wales said co-investing alongside specialist climate funds was helping the company establish and grow its presence in Wales.
The round places a public Welsh investor next to two specialist climate funds on the register, a structure increasingly common in UK industrial deep tech where first-of-a-kind plants need patient capital.
The next test is operational: moving from trials and first sales to sustained output at the Cardiff site, and signing a second furnace partner outside the UK.
Original source: Business Live — https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/huge-funding-boost-welsh-firm-34719791
