SL Materials Secures €100 Million to Scale Circular Concrete Across Europe

SL Materials, formerly known as Urban Mine, has secured an initial €100 million investment commitment from Aviva Investors’ Climate Transition European Infrastructure Fund and ABN AMRO Sustainable Impact Fund to expand its circular concrete operations across Europe. The transaction also brings Kingsley Capital Partners’ UK circular-concrete platform Koreco into SL Materials as a wholly owned subsidiary, giving the company a stronger base for expansion in the UK alongside its existing operations in the Netherlands.

 

The company uses its proprietary Smart Liberator and Smart Refiner technologies to recover cementitious materials, sand and gravel from demolished concrete and return them to higher-value use in new concrete. Rather than downcycling demolition material into lower-value filler, SL Materials aims to preserve the quality of recovered fractions so they can be used in low-carbon concrete that meets conventional requirements for strength, durability and certification. The company says the approach can also reduce embodied carbon compared with traditional concrete, depending on the product and application.

 

The investment will fund expansion of SL Materials’ existing operations in Zaandam, near Amsterdam, as well as additional production capacity at new sites. It will also support further development of the company’s technology and unlock more capacity from its current facility. The integration of Koreco adds a UK platform that was originally established to bring SL Materials’ concrete-recovery technology into the British market, creating a more closely aligned structure for future growth.

 

Read more: Norges Bank Commits €1.2 Billion to CIP’s CI VI Renewable Energy Fund

 

SL Materials has also changed its leadership as it enters the next phase of expansion. James Cousins has joined as CEO and Steve Millburn as COO, working alongside CTO René Rutte and CCO Sven Hiskemuller van der Zijden. Cousins said the company has already demonstrated that demolition concrete can be processed at industrial scale into high-quality materials for new concrete and that the new backing will allow it to expand capacity and build a broader European platform.

 

Aviva Investors said the company’s ability to combine commercial-scale operations with circular concrete technology was a key part of the investment case. ABN AMRO said the follow-on funding would help make SL Materials’ recovered concrete products available to more customers, while Kingsley Capital Partners said bringing Koreco directly into the group would strengthen expansion in the UK. The company’s next challenge will be turning that institutional backing into new production sites and wider adoption of circular concrete across European construction markets.

 

Source: SL Materials