Chemelot Ventures invests in Black Bear Carbon BV
Chemelot Ventures recently made an equity investment in Black Bear Carbon BV. Black Bear Carbon developed a process to turn used tires into carbon black and will soon open the first commercial plant. Carbon black is sold as an additive in rubber, plastics, inks and paints, offering a huge market potential. The company will sell carbon black and license out its technology for global use.
The Black Bear Carbon process offers significant environmental benefits. Producing carbon black from used tires saves massive amounts of oil. Black Bear Carbon saves 5 tons of CO₂ emission for each ton of carbon black produced. If only 5% of furnace carbon blacks will be replaced with Black Bear Carbon products it can reduce global CO₂ emissions by around 2.9 mio tons per year. Put into perspective, such a reduction would contribute around 8% to the current EU 2020 CO₂ reduction target for the Netherlands.
The huge amount of used tires which are burned or landfilled poses a big environmental problem. Other companies have tried to process used tires but so far with limited success. Black Bear Carbon is the first company able to take waste tires and turn them into valuable resources in an economic and environmentally attractive way.
Black Bear Carbon is the fourth investment of Chemelot Ventures, founded in 2014. Casper Bruens, director of Chemelot Ventures: “This is our second investment in the circular economy, addressing an important societal need to re-use resources and reduce CO₂ emission. By focusing the available expertise around us Chemelot Ventures supports producing prime quality materials from waste.”
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About Chemelot Ventures
Chemelot Ventures is an active regional venture capital investor in performance materials and life sciences in the south of The Netherlands with a strong focus on value enhancement of its portfolio companies. Chemelot Ventures is the successor fund of Limburg Ventures which started in 2004 and made 21 investments. The current fund started in 2014.
See also: www.chemelotventures.nl