Ambio, a startup in Helsinki, Finland, that sources recycled plastic from recyclers and supplies it to manufacturers, has closed a €5.1M seed round. The round was led by b2venture, a European venture capital firm that backs companies from pre-seed to Series A.
Montis joined the round, as did existing investor Lifeline Ventures, a Finnish early-stage firm. Ambio plans to spend the money on growing outside its current markets and on handling more types of plastic, so that buying recycled material feels as dependable as buying new, oil-based plastic.
Buyers of recycled plastic face a problem that buyers of new plastic rarely do: quality changes from one source, batch and recycling process to the next. “When you’re buying virgin plastics, you know exactly what you’re getting,” said Tommi Bergström, Ambio’s co-founder and chief executive. “When you’re buying recycled, you’ll know if it works when it’s running in your production line.”
How Ambio Checks Recycled Plastic
Ambio’s customers are plastic converters, the factories that turn plastic pellets into parts, film and packaging. A buyer tells Ambio which plastic it needs, how it will process it and the properties it requires. Ambio then suggests grades from recyclers it has already vetted and tests them against requirements both sides agree on.
Rather than acting as a listings site, Ambio takes on the deal itself. It signs the contracts, arranges the freight and handles any claims, and its website says it takes responsibility for quality on every order. Buyers can buy on a spot basis or move to contract purchasing. The range covers recycled versions of common plastics, including polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polycarbonate and nylon.
Each order adds data on materials, suppliers, prices and results, which the company says feeds an artificial intelligence (AI) matching engine to get better at matching buyers with grades and quoting prices. “Our goal is to predict if the material works or not before sampling even happens,” Bergström said.
Mathias Ockenfels, a partner at b2venture, said the firm was drawn to Ambio’s own data on recycled plastic quality, its model of acting as the seller, and software that learns from every deal. “We are convinced that Ambio will become the central marketplace for recycled plastics in Europe and beyond,” he said.
Converters And Recyclers On Both Sides
Ambio says it has delivered recycled plastic to more than 250 converters and works across 15 countries, figures that come from the company and have not been checked independently. It has offices in Helsinki and Berlin, Germany, and sales leads covering German-speaking Europe, Scandinavia, Finland and the Baltics, and France.
On the supply side, Ambio offers recyclers steady orders from converters matched to the grades they make, their capacity and their prices. It also tests their material, which the company says gives recyclers a clearer picture of their own product and the paperwork larger converters ask for before they sign a contract.
Bergström has said his team cannot yet change what happens in Brussels, home of the European Union (EU) institutions, but can change how buying feels. “What we can impact is the purchasing experience for the buyer,” he said.
Founders From The Slush Team
Bergström and co-founder Elmo Pakkanen started Ambio in 2023. Both are former team members at Slush, the Helsinki startup conference, and a Slush study of its alumni lists them among those who found a co-founder there.
That study found that 68 of 459 former Slush team members, about 15%, have gone on to found companies. Slush says that is more than double the share of 18 to 24-year-olds who start businesses in Finland. It also names Lifeline Ventures as an investor in several alumni startups, Ambio among them.
A Hard Market For Recyclers
Ambio is raising money at a rough time for the companies it buys from. Plastics Recyclers Europe, the industry group, said in 2025 that Europe would lose almost one million tonnes of recycling capacity between 2023 and the end of that year. It blamed cheap imports of recycled plastic, economic pressure and red tape, with the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom hit hardest.
Figures from Plastics Europe, which represents plastics producers, point the same way. Annual growth in circular plastics production in Europe, which includes recycled material, slowed from 13.6% in 2022 to 1.2% in 2024. The group also says 19% of converter demand for circular plastics was met through imports.
Cirplus, a German online platform for trading recycled plastics, went into liquidation this year after its shareholders resolved to close it. Ambio’s model differs because it buys and sells the material and takes responsibility for quality, rather than only listing it.
New EU Rules On Recycled Content
While supply is shrinking, EU rules are pushing demand for recycled plastic up. The EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation has been in force since February 2025 and applies from 12 August 2026. It sets minimum shares of recycled content in plastic packaging for 2030 and 2040, rising to up to 65% for single-use plastic bottles by 2040. Meeting those shares means packaging makers buying more recycled plastic that runs well on their lines.
Where Ambio Goes From Here
Ambio now has €5.1M from a round led by b2venture, with Montis and Lifeline Ventures alongside, and plans to take its service into more European markets and more types of plastic. Its approach is to carry the risk of each deal itself, testing recycled grades before delivery and using data from past orders to improve its matches.
The customer and country figures behind its growth come from the company alone. It is also expanding while European recyclers close plants and another recycled plastics marketplace has shut down, even as EU packaging rules push buyers towards more recycled plastic in the years ahead.
