Export Development Canada’s relationship with Pyrowave began in 2017 with the extension of a guaranteed line of credit that helped the company land its first sale with a major U.S. petrochemical producer. EDC currently supports Pyrowave through several financial products and recently made a $1,000,000 strategic co-investment in the company.

In a sector where every innovation is called “disruptive”, Montréal’s Pyrowave is about to go to market with an advanced plastics recycling technology that has the potential to upend the economics and environmental impact of the multi-billion dollar global market for post-consumer recycled plastics.

Current plastic recycling processes create a mixed-plastic polymer “sludge” with limited market value and few uses, which is why only about 8% of post-consumer plastic enters the recycling steam. Pyrowave’s patented Catalytic Microwave Depolymerization (CMD) modules take waste plastic “polymers” and carefully breaks their internal links, returning them to their component molecules, or “monomers”, which recovers original market value and can be used to make new plastics with properties identical to virgin.

As innovative as Pyrowave’s technology may be, their business model has generated almost as much interest.

“Rather than competing with the existing recycling ecosystem, we believe we can scale Pyrowave faster by placing our equipment with established recyclers, who already have the infrastructure and understand their markets,” says Jocelyn Doucet, Pyrowave’s CEO. “Our focus will be on helping them be more competitive by giving them access to advanced technologies to generate higher value and increase efficiency.”

EDC was introduced to Pyrowave as it was ready to scale up for sales. The company had received early financial support from several provincial and federal agencies, but capital financing was an ongoing problem that made it hard to take their first order. The situation turned, Mr. Doucet says, once he started working with EDC.

“EDC’s cleantech team saw the potential of our technology even before plastic waste became the hot issue it is now. Hardware-based cleantech is capital intensive and it isn’t easy to attract funding for development and commercialization before you have sales. EDC’s loan guarantee helped us land our first order and launch operations. Later, they supported other financing projects and eventually co-invested $1 million in the company, which has lifted us to a new level of credibility. I see the relationship continuing for a long time.”

EDC believes the unique benefits of Pyrowave’s technology and the strength of its “sell and support” business model makes it a strategic asset that can deliver strong economic value to Canada and major environmental benefits to the world. EDC is proud to identify them as “One to Watch” in Canada’s cleantech sector.