Critical. turn un-recyclable plastic waste into beautiful, durable and endlessly recyclable building materials as the eco disruptor to the global $938B panels market ($1.77B in Aotearoa). Our plan is to put Critical. microfactories into every city in the world.
Every piece of plastic ever created still exists today. In New Zealand, we import over 400,000T of new plastics per year and send approximately 330,000T to landfill annually. Businesses are responsible for over 83% of all plastics sent to landfill and construction is the single biggest culprit. But we as customers, investors and employees are putting pressure on big brands which is why we are seeing the acceleration of green start buildings and ambitious zero waste commitments right now.
Critical. has built the product range and technology platform to transform almost all 24 types of plastic waste into our first product, the Critical. Cleanstone, a range of beautiful and durable 100% recycled plastic panels for building fit outs. It is the eco disruptor to the near trillion dollar global timber and fibre board market.
Our unibond technology turns contaminated plastics into panels that can take a beating while offsetting approx. 1.4 tonnes of carbon for every tonne of plastics recycled. We can near endlessly customise the look and feel of the material to create unique brand stories and to ensure our Cleanstone never goes out of fashion. And at the end of life, we buy back our panels and recycle them into new Cleanstones again and again, creating a fully circular solution for the building industry.
Our plan is scale our products globally by putting our technology, the Critical. micro factory into every city in the world.
Plastic waste offers a range of perks in Cleanstone form and we’re flipping the script by turning an environmental problem into product advantages. If we factor in the total cost of ownership: namely its near indestructibility, zero water reactivity, zero to low maintenance, ease of install and its ability to last a lifetime, compared to MDF our Cleanstone panels are the more affordable option at year eight. And that is not to mention it’s novel design and aesthetic advantages.
We have a growing mass market pipeline from architects, designers and consumers who want to specify our Cleanstone across fit out projects and products. We have also secured strong partnerships through signed letters of intent, MOUs and executed pilot projects with leading New Zealand companies or global brands with a local presence such as The Warehouse Group, Restaurant Brands, Westfield, Woolworths Group, EnviroNZ and more looking to roll out our products at a national level. We are also currently in DD with Soul Capital and have received interest from a few family offices and strategic investors.
Through over 300 customer interviews and interactions, we know that our that the market is pulling us to scale faster. So we need investment to execute on this opportunity. We are looking for impact and green investors to join our seed investment round between $750K to $2M which would enable us to make 3-8 times more products, get the rubber stamp certifications so our products can be used more widely in the building industry and to build the next generation micro factory technology which would enable our plan to put Critical. in every city.
We're currently in DD with a lead investor and have interest from another three impact investor/ family offices looking to syndicate. We also have a registered interest of $275K so far from retail investors looking to join our crowd equity campaign we're planning to launch in February 2023.
Contact:
Rui Peng
Email: rui@criticaldesign.nz
Phone: +64 21 173 9524
Video: Critical. was featured on TV3's the Project as a Changemaker: