PET recycler Loop Industries gets $35 million in backing from Canadian billionaire

Quebec-based technology company Loop Industries is getting $35 million in funding from a Toronto investment firm to help fund a recycling plant to produce tens of millions of pounds of RPET each year.

The buyer of Loop’s stock, Northern Private Capital (NPC), is the exclusive investment vehicle of CFFI Ventures, a company wholly owned by billionaire entrepreneur John Risley. Risley made his fortune in the seafood and cable TV/internet provider businesses.

“Rarely in my long career have I come upon a company as well positioned to disrupt a giant market as Loop is today,” Risley said in a press release. “On top of that, we are proud to be playing a part in reducing plastic pollution in the world today.”

The RPET plant – which will be Loop’s first commercial recycling facility – is a project that’s part of the Montreal company’s joint venture with global virgin plastics producer Indorama Ventures Public Co. Ltd.

Loop owns patented and proprietary technology that depolymerizes low-value waste PET plastic and polyester fibre, including plastic bottles and packaging, carpet and polyester textile of any colour, transparency or condition and even ocean plastics that have been degraded by the sun and salt. Those monomers are then purified and repolymerized into PET.

After the purchase, NPC will have a 10.5% ownership stake in Loop. The transaction is expected to close by June 28 at the latest.