WIREDGOV

Find out more about techUK member and winner of DIGITALEUROPE's Future Unircorn Award 2022.

Running for the fifth year, the Future Unicorn Award celebrates scale-ups from across Europe that have the potential to become the future European tech giants. This year, techUK member Criculor beat competition from 17 companies from 14 European countries to win the prestigious award.

Given the continued focus on the climate crisis and milestone events such as COP26 - digital solutions tackling environmental challenges have risen to prominence, and how small companies using data and innovative technologies to monitor and lower both industrial and consumers’ footprint are increasingly in the spotlight. Coupled with their success in scaling up and securing investment, Circulor was an ideal candidate to nominate for the award. 

Circulor

Founded in 2017, Circulor is a global technology company, headquartered in the UK, with a growing presence across Germany, Singapore, Australia and Southeast Asia, as well as the East and West Coasts of the U.S.

Circulor are helping organisations to overcome the growing pressure from consumers, governments and investors to sustainably and ethically source their raw materials and build resilient supply chains. Their solution is enabling customers, including Polestar, Trafigura and Britishvolt, to gain visibility into their supply chains to achieve their environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and demonstrate responsible sourcing. 

Circulor provides in-depth, real-time tracking and tracing of complex industrial supply chains with the most mature, proven, and complete solution for high-risk and high-human impact materials. Circulor’s technology assigns a digital identity to a commodity at its point of extraction and tracks the supply chain data at each stage of production to provide an immutable record of provenance, activity, compliance, and potential anomalies. 

Coupled with real-time materials tracking, Circulor assigns direct, indirect, and attributable GHG emissions. By enabling proof of GHG and ESG impact based on the actual flow of materials, it provides a richer view of the CO2 attribution from each supply chain participant. 

Forward-thinking organisations working with Circulor are setting entirely new ESG standards, backed by proof.

Circulor has publicly raised £20 million, led by The Westly Group, a notable early-stage investor in Tesla, and joined by the venture arms of a number of their customers, including Boeing, Volvo Cars, Jaguar Land Rover, TotalEnergies, and BHP. Circulor has already won numerous awards in its five-year existence, including Global Cleantech 100, Procure Tech 100 by Kearney and Future 5 by Spend Matters.

Learnings from Circulor

Since the start, we have been collaborating with global manufactures and trade associations to understand how traceability and due diligence of raw materials and recycled content can achieve net-zero and prevent the exploitation of people. Looking at the issue from both the customer and market perspective ensured product-market fit for successful global expansion. 

By gaining the trust and working closely with these global brands, it’s contributed to us securing strong global investment. Obtaining a variety of investors including Strategics, Global VCs and Sustainability Investors, alongside a very experienced leadership team, provides a wealth of knowledge on the potential barriers a start-up may face and how to proactively overcome them.

To scale a successful business, we truly believe that smart and effective collaboration is key, underpinned by emerging technologies that continue to advance the art of the possible and help us solve global, pressing problems.

To find out more about Circulor, visit their website and follow them on LinkedIn.

Further reading

• Cop26 report – Climate Tech: The Innovators
• WEF: Digital Traceability: A Framework for More Sustainable and Resilient Value Chains
• Blockchain interview with TechUK and Veera 
• Climate Transformed: The Challenge in Decarbonising Supply Chains