After an EIC Corporate Day, Neste and Circularise form a partnership and attract a €11 million funding round to scale traceability for circular polymers

Brussels, March 3rd 2023

Summary

›An EIC-organised Corporate Day between Neste and Circularise in November 2021 led to a strategic collaboration to deploy traceability software into polymers and chemicals value chains.
›In November 2022 Circularise closed a combined €11 million financing round led by Brightlands Venture Partners with participation from Neste, Asahi Kasei, 4impact and others, plus EU grants.
›The collaboration includes blockchain-based pilots with ISCC to complement ISCC Plus certification and explore more efficient auditing of sustainable material flows.
›The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme says structured matchmaking events can turn early introductions into proofs of concept, investments and pilots, but scaling remains a practical and regulatory challenge.

How a matchmaking event became a commercial and investment milestone for circular material traceability

A November 2021 European Innovation Council Corporate Day brought Dutch traceability software supplier Circularise and Finnish renewable materials refiner Neste into contact. The initial EIC matchmaking led to pilot projects, technical cooperation and ultimately to a Series A style funding round announced in November 2022 that pooled roughly €11 million from several investors and strategic corporate partners. The deal and pilot work tie together three trends that are shaping industrial decarbonisation in Europe: corporate open innovation, digital product passports and growing investor interest in traceability platforms that can link fossil and renewable or recycled material flows.

What happened and why it matters

The November 2021 EIC Corporate Day with Neste was an organised introduction. Circularise, which had previously received EIC funding itself, presented a blockchain-based traceability platform that creates ‘digital twins’ of physical material flows. Neste identified a strategic fit: plastics and chemicals value chains are complex and often rely on mass balance approaches to allocate renewable or recycled feedstock across mixed streams. Traceability tools promise to improve verification of sustainability claims, reduce the so-called 'trust game' in supply chains and make certification and auditing more efficient.

EIC Corporate Day (23-24 November 2021):A targeted EIC matchmaking event where startups and scaleups pitch to a single large corporate or a group of corporates. For Neste and Circularise the day created a direct line to test product-market fit and to begin pilots with supply-chain partners.

The deal and funding — a quick factual snapshot

Date	Event	Amount / detail
Nov 2021	EIC Corporate Day with Neste	Initial introduction and selection of Circularise as a potential partner
May 2022 to Nov 2022	Commercial collaboration and pilot work (including with ISCC)	Blockchain-based traceability pilot to complement ISCC Plus certification
Nov 2022	Combined financing round announced	€11 million total invested by Brightlands Venture Partners, Asahi Kasei, Neste, 4impact and others plus EU grants
Prior EIC support to Circularise	EIC investment referenced in EIC materials	€1,502,331 (previous EIC investment reported)

What Circularise’s technology and business proposition are

Circularise offers a software platform intended to enable end-to-end traceability in complicated industrial supply chains. The system creates digital product passports and supports mass-balance bookkeeping and secure data sharing. The company positions itself to serve chemicals, plastics, battery materials, metals and other sectors where materials are blended, co-processed or where suppliers are reluctant to expose sensitive commercial data.

Digital Product Passport:A data record that links a physical product with verified information about composition, origin, processing and environmental indicators. Digital passports are becoming a requirement in EU policy debates for products and batteries, and they are central to Circularise’s product offering.

Mass balance bookkeeping:An accounting method used across plastics and chemicals supply chains to allocate quantities of renewable or recycled feedstock within mixed processing streams. It is a pragmatic approach while physical segregation remains uneconomic at scale. Software can automate records and improve audit-readiness but cannot resolve the fundamental economics of segregation versus mass balance.

Smart Questioning and selective sharing:Circularise emphasises the ability for suppliers to decide what information to reveal. Its Smart Questioning approach and selective disclosure aim to enable verification while protecting commercially sensitive details and intellectual property.

Use of a public blockchain:Circularise states that it uses a public blockchain to provide authentication, decentralisation and cryptographic proof of data provenance. That choice trades off between strong, verifiable audit trails and the practical considerations of transaction costs, privacy engineering and the choice of ledger (public versus permissioned) that affect both scalability and energy profiles.

Why Neste engaged: corporate priorities and practical use cases

Neste has a corporate strategy focused on scaling renewable and circular feedstocks for fuels and chemical feedstock. Antti Ritala, Head of Venturing and Acquisitions at Neste, framed the company’s interest in traceability as a response to a widespread transparency gap in polymers and chemicals value chains. Because products are processed and mixed, physical inspection alone often does not reveal whether a product contains recycled or renewable inputs. Digital traceability is being tested as a tool to strengthen certification integrity and streamline audits.

ISCC Plus pilot:Neste and Circularise, together with ISCC (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification), ran tests using Circularise’s blockchain system as a complement to ISCC Plus certification. The pilot explored whether the blockchain can make auditing more efficient and the certified data more robust by providing authenticated, decentralised evidence of material flows and sustainability attributes.

In short, Neste sees traceability software as an enabler of market confidence. It can help verify sustainability claims across partners and customers and reduce the operational friction of audits while enabling more ambitious commercial offers built on renewable or recycled inputs.

What the EIC contributed and the limits of matchmaking

Both Neste and Circularise explicitly credit the European Innovation Council’s Corporate Day format for creating the initial introduction that led to pilot projects and then investment. The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme runs curated matchmaking events and invests resources in scoping, selection and follow-up for corporates and EIC-backed companies. The EIC reports results metrics and says the model consistently delivers follow-ups, proofs of concept and business deals.

EIC Corporate Partnership Programme — scope and numbers:Since 2017 the EIC Business Acceleration Services have organised dozens of Corporate Days and multi-corporate events to connect startups with large corporates. Over time the programme has grown and reports hundreds of corporate partners and thousands of participating startups and corporate representatives. Such events are important low-friction mechanisms for discovery but do not guarantee commercial scale-up or regulatory acceptance of new technologies.

Matchmaking is the first step. The Neste–Circularise case shows a common sequence: introduction at a curated event, early technical work and proofs of concept, pilots with certification bodies, and then strategic investment. But a single success story should not obscure the practical and organisational work that follows: standards alignment, supplier onboarding, integration with enterprise IT and ERP systems, and multi-party governance for data sharing and dispute resolution.

Standards, certification and verification: pilots versus production

Traceability software is most valuable when it integrates with existing certification schemes and regulatory frameworks. The ISCC Plus collaboration is a realistic pilot because ISCC is already used in bioeconomy and renewable content verification. Using a blockchain ledger to complement ISCC could reduce administrative burden during audits if protocols, data models and access controls are agreed among auditors, certificate holders and verifiers.

ISCC and ISCC Plus:ISCC is an accepted sustainability certification framework used for feedstock and bio-based products. ISCC Plus extends certification to specific supply chains. Pilots that combine ISCC and digital audit trails aim to make audits faster and data more tamper-evident, but they require alignment with certification rules, and legal recognition of digitally stored evidence.

Practical challenges and open questions

There are tangible reasons to be cautiously optimistic about traceability platforms. They address a real verification problem for renewable and recycled feedstocks. At the same time, adoption barriers remain significant and are both technical and institutional.

Interoperability and standards:A commercial traceability platform risks becoming another silo unless it adheres to open standards and is interoperable with other systems and certification frameworks. The EU’s policy push toward Digital Product Passports and sectoral rules (for batteries, for example) will raise the bar for interoperability but will also create the regulatory incentives for platforms that can integrate across ecosystems.

Data governance and privacy:Platforms must balance auditability with protection of suppliers’ confidential data. Selective disclosure mechanisms and careful access control are necessary but introduce complexity in auditing procedures and legal compliance. Third-party attestation, chain-of-custody standards and clear liability models are required to move from pilot to volume.

Blockchain trade-offs:Public blockchains provide strong, decentralised proof of data origin but raise questions about transaction costs, throughput and environmental footprints depending on the chosen ledger. Permissioned ledgers can be more efficient but rely on trusted operator models. Neither option eliminates the need for robust off-chain verification—sensors, lab reports and trusted attestations remain essential.

From pilots to market:Pilot projects can demonstrate feasibility with a handful of partners. Scaling requires onboarding hundreds of suppliers, aligning contract terms, synchronising ERP systems and establishing auditor acceptance. That is where many pilots stall unless there is sustained commercial incentive or regulatory requirement to scale.

Policy and market drivers that could accelerate adoption

Regulation will be a pivotal accelerator. The EU’s work on Digital Product Passports, the ES(P)R discussions for product sustainability, upcoming rules for battery passports, and corporate sustainability reporting laws increase incentives for verified supply-chain data. At the same time voluntary certification schemes like ISCC, REDcert and similar standards will shape buyer expectations. Corporates that secure early, auditable claims to renewable or recycled feedstock may gain market access and first-mover advantage in procurement and B2B sourcing.

What to watch next

Several near-term signals will show whether solutions like Circularise can move from promising pilots to broad industry adoption: 1) whether ISCC or other certification schemes formally accept blockchain-backed audit trails; 2) how many major suppliers and OEMs sign onto shared data models and agree cross-party access rules; 3) whether regulators incorporate digital product passports into compliance frameworks; 4) whether additional corporates follow Neste’s path and commit to purchasing or co-investing in traceability platforms; and 5) whether the platform can demonstrate clear commercial value in reduced audit costs or improved procurement outcomes.

The Neste–Circularise story illustrates how the EIC’s corporate matchmaking can catalyse pilots, follow-on investment and proof-of-concept activity. It is an instructive example of how public innovation programmes, startups and corporates can combine resources to tackle complicated verification problems in supply chains. The work ahead is less about technology proof and more about governance, standards and scaling commercial operations across global supply chains.

Quick reference: who’s who and why they matter

Organisation	Role in the story	Notes
Circularise	Provider of traceability software and digital product passports	Founded 2016 in the Netherlands. Offers mass-balance bookkeeping, Smart Questioning, claims ISO 27001 certification. Previous EIC funding reported at €1.502.331.
Neste	Strategic corporate partner and investor	Large refiner of renewable feedstocks; pilot partner in ISCC blockchain tests; investor in the combined €11M round.
EIC (European Innovation Council)	Facilitator and funder	Organised Corporate Day matchmaking, provides Business Acceleration Services and earlier funding to some beneficiaries.
ISCC	Certification partner in pilots	ISCC Plus certification used as a framework to evaluate blockchain-backed audit trails.
Investors (Brightlands Venture Partners, Asahi Kasei, 4impact, others)	Provided combined €11M investment announced Nov 2022	Brightlands led the round. Investment intended to scale product, R&D and commercial operations.

If you are a policy maker, corporate buyer, investor or supply chain manager, the practical lesson is simple: verification matters, and the pathway to verified circular material claims will pass through a mix of software, certification alignment and governance. Matchmaking events open doors. The hard work is the months and years of integration, standards work and commercial uptake that follow.