Circular Materials Raises €11.8 Million to Mine Metals From Wastewater

Circular Materials has raised €11.8 million ($13.5 million) to scale a technology that pulls critical metals out of factory wastewater instead of the ground. The Italian cleantech firm closed a Simple Agreement for Future Equity round backed by CDP Venture Capital, the European Innovation Council Fund, EIT RawMaterials, 360 Capital, Corbites and Lumar S.r.l. Its patented process, called SWaP, already recovers more than 99% of the dissolved metals in complex industrial wastewater streams.

The money lands weeks after the European Court of Auditors delivered a blunt verdict on the bloc’s own recycling ambitions. Investigators found that none of the rare earths used in the EU are processed domestically, and a third of the bloc’s critical raw materials are not recycled at all. Circular Materials is betting that wastewater already flowing through European factories can close that gap faster than any new mine.

A Second Hub Rises in Ferrara

The capital funds a new Circular Materials Hub in Ferrara, the company’s second industrial site after its original plant in Padua. The Ferrara facility is meant to push annual treatment capacity past 20,000 metric tons, more than sixfold above the roughly 3,000 tons the company handles today, according to trade outlet Metal Tech News.

Padua did not start there. When it opened, the plant processed about 1,000 tons of wastewater a year with a team of 24 people, recovering nickel, copper, tin, chromium and precious metals. That capacity has already tripled since. Ferrara is designed to be the template, not the ceiling, for a planned network of recovery hubs across Europe’s industrial regions.

Marco Bersani, chief executive of Circular Materials, framed the shift in blunt terms. “Wastewater is not simply waste, but a highly valuable and often untapped resource,” he said. “Our focus remains on building the infrastructure needed to recover valuable materials,” he added, tying that goal to industrial competitiveness and more circular supply chains.

Why Europe’s Recycling Math Still Falls Short

The European Critical Raw Materials Act sets binding 2030 benchmarks for how much of the bloc’s material needs come from home soil.

• 10% of annual consumption from domestic extraction
• 40% from domestic processing
• 25% from domestic recycling
• 65% cap on how much of any single material can come from one non-EU country

Extraction and processing both depend on permitting reforms that move at government speed. The European Court of Auditors report found financial, legal and administrative bottlenecks are already slowing new mines and refineries, and that ten of the bloc’s 26 critical raw materials are imported in full. Recycling carries none of that baggage. The wastewater streams Circular Materials taps already exist, sitting inside factories that are already permitted and already operating.

The scale of Europe’s exposure explains the urgency. China supplies 100% of the EU’s heavy rare earth elements, and Brussels has watched Beijing tighten export controls on several other materials over the past three years.

Factories Become an Unlikely Ore Body

Circular Materials does not mine anything. It buys access to metal that is already dissolved in liquid waste from electroplating shops, battery recyclers and chemical manufacturers, then extracts it before the water gets treated as ordinary effluent.

One recent pilot ran on nickel-enriched wastewater supplied by Argos Surface Technologies, a European industrial surface-treatment firm. Andrea Siano, Argos’ president, described the arrangement as a way to turn a disposal cost into a revenue line.

We are turning waste into a valuable resource for the energy transition.

Siano made the comment while describing how the partnership let Argos supply feedstock for what Circular Materials calls strategic nickel recovery, according to Metal Tech News. The Padua site has already cleared a regulatory bar few competitors have reached: recovered material there qualifies for End-of-Waste status under the EU’s Waste Framework Directive, meaning it can be sold as a genuine secondary raw material instead of being regulated as hazardous waste.

Who’s Behind the €11.8 Million Bet?

Six backers filled out the SAFE round: two public innovation funds, one Italian state-linked venture platform, one venture firm that has followed the company since its early days, and two smaller strategic investors.

• European Innovation Council Fund – the venture capital investment arm of the European Commission
• EIT RawMaterials – a European Commission-backed consortium of more than 300 partners focused on raw material innovation
• CDP Venture Capital – the venture capital platform tied to Italy’s state investment group
• 360 Capital – the venture firm that first backed Circular Materials in 2020
• Corbites and Lumar S.r.l. – strategic co-investors rounding out the round

The round arrives with regulatory tailwind already attached. In a press release announcing its selection as a Strategic Project, Circular Materials confirmed the European Commission designated its RECOVER-IT initiative as strategic under the CRMA in March 2025, one of a handful of Italian projects on that first list. That status brings streamlined permitting and priority access to public financing, the kind of regulatory shortcut mining projects rarely get this early.

Padua’s Neighbors in Europe’s Circular Economy Boom

Circular Materials is not raising money in isolation. European investors have spent the past year backing a cluster of companies chasing supply chains that skip virgin extraction entirely.

Dutch water-materials startup Porelio closed a pre-seed round to scale PFAS-free water treatment materials, a different corner of the same industrial water problem. Nylon recycler Syntetica raised funding as fashion brands bet on recycled fiber supply, and bio-alcohols producer Catalyxx landed an EU grant for a bio-alcohols plant built on the same domestic-supply logic driving the CRMA.

Each company is small. Together they represent a bet that Europe’s industrial waste streams, not new deposits, hold the cheapest path to resource independence.

The Risks Still Facing a Wastewater Gold Rush

Circular Materials still describes itself as moving from industrial validation to broader commercial deployment, language that signals the company has proven the chemistry but not yet the economics at scale. Ferrara has to work as designed, on schedule, before the hub-network plan means anything beyond a slide deck.

The business also depends on partners like Argos choosing to sell their wastewater rather than treat it conventionally, and on recovered metal prices staying competitive against mined material. Nickel, copper and platinum group metals all trade on volatile global markets that a single Italian scale-up cannot influence.

That has not stopped six investors, including two arms of the European Commission itself, from putting fresh capital behind the wager. For now, Circular Materials has the funding, the regulatory status and a working plant. Ferrara will show whether the model scales.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Circular Materials’ Supercritical Water Precipitation process actually do?

SWaP treats industrial wastewater under supercritical water conditions, extreme heat and pressure that force dissolved metal ions out of solution as a solid precipitate. That solid is then separated and refined into a sellable metal concentrate, while the process is designed to sharply cut the hazardous sludge that conventional wastewater treatment leaves behind.

Which materials count as critical or strategic under EU law?

The Critical Raw Materials Act keeps two separate lists, one of critical raw materials and one of strategic raw materials, sorted by supply risk and economic importance. The European Commission reviews and updates both lists every four years, so the set of materials companies like Circular Materials can target is expected to shift over time.

Why did Circular Materials raise a SAFE instead of a priced equity round?

A Simple Agreement for Future Equity lets a company take in cash now and convert it into equity at a future priced round, without setting a valuation today. That structure is common for scale-ups moving between validation and commercial growth, which is exactly the stage Circular Materials says it is in.

What is End-of-Waste status and why does it matter?

End-of-Waste status is a regulatory clearance under the EU’s Waste Framework Directive. Once a material qualifies, it can be sold as a genuine secondary raw material rather than remaining classified and regulated as waste. Circular Materials’ Padua site has already secured that status, a step that gives its recovered metal a clear commercial path most recovery projects still lack.

How big could Circular Materials’ hub network get by 2030?

The company’s own plans point to a network of recovery hubs across key industrial districts in the EU by 2030, with a combined target of valorizing more than 4,000 tons a year of strategic metals once that network is running, according to its March 2025 announcement.