Bollegraaf and Greyparrot Forge Strategic AI Partnership to Transform Global Waste Management Industry
World’s largest builder of recycling facilities teams up with AI waste analytics leader to make thousands of recycling plants more efficient in response to the growing waste crisis.
Bollegraaf, the world's largest builder of recycling plants, has entered into a strategic partnership with Greyparrot, a pioneer in AI waste analytics, to transform global waste management. As part of the agreement, Bollegraaf will transfer its AI vision business to Greyparrot and make a cash investment, for a total value of $12.8M, in Greyparrot, obtaining a non-controlling stake in the company. It will also serve as a worldwide distributor and strategic partner for Greyparrot's Analyzer, which currently provides 100% visibility into waste streams at recycling plants across 14 countries using AI camera systems.
The deal includes Greyparrot acquiring Bollegraaf’s vision-based computing intellectual property (IP) and esteemed AI development team. Greyparrot will also open its first office in mainland Europe in the Netherlands.
With this groundbreaking partnership, both companies aim to retrofit thousands of existing Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) and Plastics Recovery Facilities (PRFs) with advanced AI capabilities to significantly boost recycling rates and quantify material emissions. The collaboration will bring forth revolutionary smart recycling plants that are fully automated and agile, unlocking new value in waste streams while diverting millions of tonnes of waste away from landfills, oceans, and incinerators. In a development set to transform waste management, this marks a momentous acceleration in the global shift from a linear to a
circular economy. Together, Greyparrot and Bollegraaf commit to developing further products that combine the strengths of both companies to make the vision of fully automated and intelligent sorting facilities a reality.
With over a 50% share in the global recycling plant market, providing turnkey recycling solutions, Bollegraaf is well-positioned to provide the physical infrastructure, while Greyparrot's proven ability to embed AI waste analytics into software and hardware systems adds the essential digital layer. In 2023 alone, Greyparrot’s Analyzer helped facilities analyse more than 25 billion waste objects, characterising them into 70+ categories in real-time to reveal seven layers of data, including material type, financial value, brand, and GHG emissions.
By 2050, the world is expected to generate 3.4 billion tonnes of waste annually. With only around 5,500 facilities handling municipal solid waste currently operating worldwide, there is a critical need to build more next-generation plants and retrofit older ones with new technologies – such as AI – to speed up processing times and improve recycling rates to meet the growing tsunami of waste.
Today, only 1% of waste is monitored in facilities, and even in advanced economies, 40% of waste sorting is done by hand. AI, and the data it unlocks in real-time, will help digitise and automate systems to capture a massive amount of lost financial value. For plastic waste in the U.S. alone, lack of visibility and automation contributes to $80B-$120B being lost a year to landfills and incineration. Greyparrot’s Analyzer gives 100% visibility into waste composition to unlock a new, more intelligent level of insight about waste that Greyparrot calls waste intelligence. With automated, real-time waste monitoring and digitised systems powered by AI, the industry can tackle the issue of 'invisible waste' and transform a traditionally labour-intensive process.
With increased data transparency, waste managers can confidently demonstrate regulatory and contractual compliance. This vital waste data on the post-consumption world will foster unprecedented collaboration across the waste value chain and those influencing it, uniting producers, waste managers and regulators to recover and reuse waste materials more sustainably.
FOTOALBUM
NEWS
