AION: circularity as a service

“We used to work in renewables when we were told they wouldn’t fly,” says Runa Haug Khoury, CEO of AION, underlining her long-standing commitment to environmental sustainability. AION’s purpose is to industrially scale a circular plastic economy. The company, based in Oslo, provides flexible and traceable end-to-end services in the field of circularity on plastics with a documented sustainability effect for its customers. “We call it ‘circularity as a service’,” she adds. Working with its partners, AION will not only ensure plastic is recycled effectively, but also collect data about the material’s past and current use, and its processing, analyze it and verify the environmental benefits.

“Waste management has a trust issue, so we are trying to enable transparency and digitalisation, improving traceability and collecting data all along the way, calculating environmental impact and making sure we walk the talk.”

One such use-case is plastic trays. AION has developed a collaboration with McDonald’s across the Nordic markets, using recycled materials to produce sturdier trays that last longer. “Actually, although the extended life is now 24 months, we can re-use the same material on the same product ten times, meaning up to 20 years of tray life,” Runa explains. “Plastic is a good material. It’s lightweight, robust, reliable. We just need to enable a shift from linear to circular use. We need to close the tap on plastic pollution, this is crucial.”

Elsewhere, AION-produced plastic transportation pallets reduce waste by 90-95%, CO2 emissions by 84% and cost by 20-50%, all the while making operations smarter, easier, and safer.

“What’s key in terms of environmental impact is getting scalability into it,” Runa says. That’s where venture capital comes into the picture. AION recently received an equity investment from EIF-backed venture capital firm Ocean14, to boost their growth efforts. “There was an instant click in terms of the industrial scalability of our vision. We’re still in the start-up phase of balancing opportunity and saying enough no’s, but we’re working with Ocean14 to identify targets and select niches to maximise impact.”

Timing seems to be on their side, with increased public scrutiny on sustainability, growing awareness and plastic accountability within many industries like marine plastics, and a trend within the industry of seeing circularity as a way of hedging against volatile commodity prices. Plus the impact of regulatory measures, with the EU taxonomy pushing things in the right direction: “We really hadn’t foreseen how impactful the taxonomy would be in moving things. It really lifted the sustainability agenda to the board rooms and top management.”

With 282 million metric tonnes of plastic waste produced annually worldwide, but only 15% recycled, “things need to change,” she concludes.

Company: AION (Norway)

Type of business: recycling; plastics, circularity

EIF financing: EFSI Sub-Window 1

Financial intermediary: Ocean14