Samsara Eco produces and sells fossil-free polymer resins that can be integrated into supply chains, potentially replacing plastic packaging and textiles with more sustainable alternatives.
The Australian startup took a major step forward on Wednesday, securing an additional $65 million (A$100 million) in all-equity funding. The round was co-led by Temasek and Mainsequence, an Australian deep tech investment fund. The investment also included new and existing backers including DCVC, Hitachi Ventures, Lululemon, Titanium Ventures and Wollemi Capital, bringing the total amount Samsara has raised since its founding in 2020 to $73 million (A$164 million).
Samsara CEO and founder Paul Riley told TechCrunch that a lot has changed since the company's last funding round in 2022. “We've continued to build out our library of enzymes, and now we can recycle nylon 6,6, which is notoriously difficult to recycle, in addition to polyester and nylon 6,” Riley said. “We've partnered with Lululemon and our first product is [made from enzymatically recycled polyester] It is expected to be launched in the market early this year.”
Nylon 6-6, also known as Nylon 66, is a synthetic polymer commonly used in the textile and plastics industries.
Samsara's Jerrabomberra, NSW facility is currently under construction. Riley explains that the facility will serve potential clients such as global brands that partner, test and produce with Samsara Eco. Additionally, the company has ambitious plans to expand its North American team and open its first facility on the continent. The new capital will also be used to bring additional facilities to Southeast Asia, where many manufacturing brands are based, in the coming years. “Creating a path to broader commercialization on a global scale is our focus,” Riley told TechCrunch.
Meanwhile, Lululemon will become Samsara's first textile partner.
“With [Lululemon’s] “We've made great strides towards a sustainable fashion and circular future with a lower carbon footprint,” says Riley. “That's what's unique about our process – it's not just circularity, it's carbon. Being able to recycle nylon 6-6 and polyester gives us the potential to give garments an infinite lifespan and keep them from ever ending up in landfills again.”
The 4-year-old startup says it has seen strong demand from the apparel and consumer goods industries, and Mr. Reilly said the company's technology could be applied to other sectors, adding that automotive and electronics are on the horizon.
Samsara was founded in 2020 in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), Woolworths and MainSequence Ventures to develop biological catalysts (enzymes) to create new approaches to recycling. Since then, Samsara has focused on expanding its family of enzymes for plastic recycling.
The company says this approach will enable people to keep plastic out of landfills and oceans.
“The problem with traditional plastic recycling is that plastic degrades over time or gets transformed into other products that don't rely on the structural integrity of their original form,” Riley says. “For example, when you see an item of clothing with a recycling tag on it, you're almost always seeing a product made from recycled packaging, like plastic bottles. This isn't recycling, it's just delayed landfilling.”
Alternative approaches such as chemical recycling are also bad for the environment, according to the CEO. While plastic can be recycled, the process uses heat and chemical leaching, which often produces high carbon emissions and can be worse than making plastic from fossil fuels, he explained.
Samsara's patented recycling technology, EosEco, differs from traditional recycling by speeding up end-to-end recycling times and operating at lower temperatures and pressures, resulting in significantly less energy, heat and carbon emissions, with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that is significantly lower than the carbon emissions of fossil-fuel-derived virgin plastics.
“We also have a significant lead in our ability to recycle a range of plastics, including blended and coloured polymers,” Riley said. “We continue to build out our enzyme library so that we can recycle even more plastics at scale in the future. Hopefully, our technology will be used to recycle 1.5 million tonnes of plastic per year by 2030, preventing millions of tonnes of carbon from entering the planet.”
“This funding comes about a year and a half after the startup raised approximately $34.7 million (AUD54 million) in Series A,” Reilly said. Samsara did not disclose its valuation.
The company has 60 staff across Australia and North America and plans to grow its headcount in North America and Singapore to 90 by the end of 2025.