Circular Plastics Accelerator invests in Matoha
The Circular Plastics Accelerator, supported by Archipelago Ventures, makes an investment into AI-powered textiles sorting startup Matoha
LONDON, 10 April 2025 – Matoha, a London-based AI-powered technology business, has completed the first phase of a £1.5m raise to unlock circularity in textiles and materials supply chains. Archipelago Ventures and Circular Plastics Accelerator led the seed round for Matoha, a UK-based startup that enables fast, efficient, low cost textiles sorting. Other investors include Conduit Connect, British Design Fund, Fashion for Good, and angel investors.
Today, more than 15 kilograms of textile waste is generated per person every year in Europe. The largest source of textile waste is discarded clothes and home textiles from consumers – accounting for around 85 percent of the total. Currently less than 1% of this is fibre-to-fibre recycled, and 10% is recycled (downcycled) for other uses.
Approximately 30% of end-of-life textiles are reused or exported. This means that approximately 60% of textile waste is not currently collected and ends up in landfill or is incinerated in the UK and Europe. Of the textiles waste that is exported, much is not able to be reused due to quality, condition and demand.
About Matoha
One of the key problems in the recycling of textiles is the identification and separation of their component fibres – each individual fibre type has a different recycling process and needs to be sent to a specific recycling plant. Currently, recycling plants have strict requirements around which types of materials they can and cannot accept for recycling.
Matoha has developed manually operated devices that scan and accurately identify the compositional make-up of textiles in less than a second, enabling businesses to sort waste efficiently without a huge investment in infrastructure or the need to send materials away for lab analysis. The devices are designed to be intuitive and easy to use, requiring minimal staff training. This augments the human capability to rapidly sort materials into valuable reusable and recyclable feedstock, speeding up the entire sorting process.
Manufactured in the UK by Matoha’s own in-house team, the devices range from handheld scanners that can be used on site or in the field, to in-built desktop scanners for industrial-scale waste sorting facilities that enable staff to quickly and efficiently sort materials. Matoha’s technology is proving equally valuable for circularity in other industries.
Matoha has raised investment in order to further develop and extend the capability of the handheld devices. The second phase of this Seed round will support the automation and scaling of Matoha’s technology via AI-driven robotic solutions and is moving to a close in H2 2025.
