Defence sustainability startup Uplift360 is creating a new company in Luxembourg, where it will work on groundbreaking R&D for reducing waste in the defence and aerospace sector.
The company was originally founded in 2021 in the UK by military veteran Jamie Meighan and defence materials specialist Sam Staincliffe after they realised the enormous amount of material waste created after humanitarian interventions. “In terms of defence and monitoring systems, it can generate a huge amount of waste and that waste is often in environments where we’re supposed to be trying to help,” explains Staincliffe. “Actually what we’re doing is creating a problem both logistically, supply chain wise and also in terms of waste footprint.”
“Para-aramid can cost 85 times more than steel […] It can take over 37 kilograms of petrochemicals to make one kilogram of Kevlar. It’s entirely derived from fossil fuels. And it’s got a pretty fragile supply chain as quite a lot of the chemicals required come from China.”
Uplift360 CTO Sam Staincliffe
5-year shelf life
The founders saw how fashiontech was evolving to be able to break down and extract low-value materials like polyester and put them back in the value chain. They reached out to their networks to see if there was interest to do the same for the defence sector. The UK defence ministry pointed to an issue with body armour disposal and asked the founders if their work in chemical recycling could be applied to the problem.
Most armour had a five-year shelf life, and yet contains “significant amounts of very expensive materials”, like high performance polymer para-aramid, better known as the Dupont brand Kevlar.
“Para-aramid can cost 85 times more than steel […] It can take over 37 kilograms of petrochemicals to make one kilogram of Kevlar. It’s entirely derived from fossil fuels. And it’s got a pretty fragile supply chain as quite a lot of the chemicals required come from China,” explains Staincliffe.”
A small amount of para-aramid is recycled and used in tarmac and brake pads but, otherwise it is buried in landfill or incinerated for energy.
World’s first
With their founding team of three, Uplift360Tech identified a system to dissolve para-aramid into a liquid and push it through fine needles to make new fibres. “As far as we are aware, we are the world’s first company to be able to do that,” says Staincliffe.
Since they secured a proof of concept in early 2023, the startup has raised public funding, including an R&D grant from the Luxembourg economy and defence ministries to work with the Luxembourg Institute for Science and Technology on the development of new materials that are circular by design, but non fossil fuel derived, for the defence, security, aviation and automotive markets.
“The great thing about materials is that they are sector agnostic. So although we are working in the defence environment and aerospace and security the global impact would be huge. Because defence is a catalyst for change, so if defense changes, other sectors will change because suddenly circular economics material will become incredibly cool,” the co-founder explains.
Licensing IP to other companies
The firm, which is now fine-tuning its para-aramid processes, is also working closely with para-aramid manufacturers DuPont and Teijin, to use their materials for baseline testing. Ultimately, they will licence out their IP to other companies to use their processes. Another high performance polymer recycling project the company will work on in Luxembourg is carbon fibre composites, used in aviation and space sectors. For this product, Uplift360Tech has applied to the next Fit 4 Start accelerator programme.
“We are hoping to scale the team in both countries,” the co-founder explains, adding that they are hiring a chemical engineer, and a research scientist. Within the next six months, she expects the Luxembourg team to reach four, doubling to eight by 2025.
