Abstract: bobine, a France-based industrial deeptech startup is electrifying a critical step of chemical recycling by reinventing the cracking of pyrolysis gases/oil used in European steam crackers. By combining catalytic activation with highly efficient induction heating, the technology sharply reduces energy consumption, operating costs, and carbon emissions. This breakthrough removes a key economic bottleneck of chemical recycling, improving its competitiveness beyond subsidy dependence. The current funding round will support the deployment of a second-generation industrial demonstrator, paving the way toward the company’s first commercial-scale plant (FOAK).
Today, the vast majority of recycled plastic volumes rely on mechanical recycling, which involves sorting, shredding, and remelting polymers. However, this process progressively degrades polymer chains and accumulates contaminants, limiting the number of reuse cycles and often resulting in lower-value applications.
To overcome these structural limitations, chemical recycling technologies, particularly pyrolysis, which are already commercially deployed by major oil companies, aim to break plastics back down to their molecular building blocks (monomers or intermediates), theoretically enabling near-infinite circularity and producing plastic of virgin-grade quality.
These processes, however, face significant constraints. According to ADEME [1], 20–40% of the plastic feedstock is consumed during pyrolysis to meet the process’s energy requirements, while greenhouse gas emissions can be up to nine times higher than those of mechanical recycling [2]. The real yield of the chain ranges between 25% and 35%, slightly higher according to industrial operators but without altering the general order of magnitude.
This low overall efficiency translates into high energy demands and significant costs, making chemical recycling currently less competitive than virgin plastics, despite its potential to valorize plastic streams that are otherwise non-recyclable. In France, ADEME estimates that over one million tonnes of plastics nearly three-quarters of currently non-recycled plastics can only be processed through pyrolysis-type technologies.
bobine is built around a strong and industry-proven leadership team, led by two founders whose backgrounds are anchored in the chemicals and Oil & Gas ecosystems. Vincent Simonneau, CEO, has spent over a decade at Prosernat before leading innovation activities across EMEA at Pall Corporation. Romain Rivière, CTO, contributes a strong technical track record in process engineering and industrial safety, and has led Arkema’s Process Safety business unit for several years. bobine has assembled a team composed almost exclusively of senior profiles, each with more than ten years of experience in heavy process industries. This industrial credibility is further reinforced by the active participation of Jean-Bernard Lartigue, former President of Total Refining & Chemicals, whose involvement serves as a key accelerator for high-level strategic partnerships.
In the plastics chemical sectors, where value chains are complex, capital intensity is high, safety, and infrastructure constraints, a deep and nuanced understanding of the strategic environment is critical to making progress. This gives bobine a decisive edge in deploying a breakthrough technology within existing industrial assets and underpins Axeleo’s strong conviction in the team.
bobine is developing a high-efficiency, fully electrified, low-carbon chemical recycling pathway that enables the direct production of virgin-grade olefins from polyolefin plastic waste (PE/PP) that is currently considered non-recyclable. By producing olefins directly from plastic waste without relying on conventional steam cracking, bovine introduces a world-first technological breakthrough compared to existing polyolefin recycling routes.
Its induction-heated catalytic process enables more targeted reactions at significantly lower temperatures, delivering higher selectivity and increased product purity. This approach materially simplifies the industrial process chain while sharply reducing its carbon footprint. Compared to state-of-the-art technologies, bobine’s technology demonstrates step-change improvements: up to 45% higher olefin yields, a 60% reduction in energy consumption, and a 45% decrease in production costs. Together, these gains underpin a robust techno-economic advantage and a clear, credible pathway toward cost competitiveness at scale.
bobine is one of the very few greentech companies that has successfully demonstrated these results at pilot scale, over 1,000× larger than laboratory conditions, while processing real plastic waste. This level of pre-industrial validation is rare in the recycling space at that stage of maturity and has already attracted strong interest from major industrial players. We consider this a clear differentiator and a key element in building our conviction around bobine’s potential.
bobine does not aim to rebuild the entire chemical recycling value chain. Instead, the company deliberately positions itself within an existing, commercial-scale, and capital-intensive market, European steam crackers, by delivering a critical technological building block that is both highly differentiated and difficult to replicate. This positioning creates a localized creative monopoly: a key component that can be integrated directly into existing industrial installations, embedded at the core of infrastructure, and protected by high barriers to entry, including proprietary catalytic know-how, complex industrial integration, and long-term validation requirements.
To support its ambitions, bobine has established a strategic partnership with the Michelin Group, installing its pilot unit directly on an industrial site. This setup enables the company to operate within a mature industrial environment, benefiting from the site’s infrastructure and operating standards, which significantly reduces execution and scale-up risk while accelerating industrial validation. Access to such an environment has been a key enabler, allowing the team to design, build, and operate its first pilot in just eighteen months.
bobine operates in a context of increasing regulatory pressure and growing demand for sustainable, circular materials. Since March 4, 2024, the European PPWR regulation mandates the progressive incorporation of recycled plastics into sensitive packaging: 10% by 2030 and 25% by 2040. This translates into a requirement for 2M tons of feedstock processing capacity as early as 2030, rising to 5M tons by 2040, while the current project pipeline in Europe covers only ~30% of this 2030 demand.
In France, this momentum is reinforced by the extension of Extended Producer Responsibility to industrial and commercial packaging, requiring companies to fund the end-of-life management of B2B packaging. A strong financial lever accompanies this shift: starting in January 2026, eco-organisms will be required to pay incentives for the use of recycled plastics, from which the chemical recycling sector, including bobine, will directly benefit.
The positive impact of bobine is clear and multifaceted: it acts as an enabler for chemical-based recycling by dramatically narrowing the gap between recycled and virgin plastics, thereby improving the circularity of these materials. It also reduces energy consumption in existing industrial processes while electrifying them, contributing to increased electricity demand and supporting the development of a decarbonized grid, all without rebound effects or the need for additional land. bobine is fully aligned with Axeleo’s Impact Methodology.
We are thrilled to back bobine in the years ahead and to do everything we can to help scale a technology that can redefine plastics recycling! It’s time to redefine plastics recycling at scale and move away from virgin plastic dependency.