Enval ready for commercial waste recycling

United Kingdom-based Enval Limited has developed a technology which allows the recyclable foil to be extracted from laminate packaging like food and drink pouches, pet food pouches and toothpaste tubes. The firm's factory is now ready to undertake commercial waste recycling, and it has launched a crowd-funding campaign on Cambridge-based platform SyndicateRoom as it looks to raise £800,000 to fund further growth.

Enval was born out of a research project at Cambridge University's department of chemical engineering which turned out to be a commercially viable project. Carlos Ludlow-Palafox is the founder and managing director of Enval.

He said: "We've been using the factory in our commercial business about a month now, so we've accompished what we initially wanted to do, but now we want to take it further. It's a new process so we want to continue improving and keep pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve."

Enval's technology uses a microwave-induced pyrolysis process, which changes the chemical composition of the packaging and extracts the recyclable aluminium part. Carlos said that they plan to licence the machines to waste recycling firms, a few of whom have already expressed an interest in the process.

The company has also attracted attention from backers including the Cambridge Capital Group and Cambridge Angels, both of whom have an understanding of promising business ideas.

"With new technology things don't always work first or even second time, so it has been a long and at times painful journey to get this far, but we're very happy to have the factory up and running and hopefully there's a lot more to come," Carlos said.