Mobile Phone Recycling Secures $15 Million in Funding

Mobile phone recycling company, ReCellular says that it has raised US$15 million from the  Investor Growth Capital (IGC) to fund its expansion plans. ReCellular's revenues have increased an average of 25 percent for the past eight years, and expects to process more than 6 million phones in 2008.

"This investment marks a milestone in ReCellular's history," says ReCellular CEO Chuck Newman. "It marks our transition from a successful start-up in the emerging field of cell-phone recycling into the undisputed global leader in electronics sustainability."

IGC is the wholly owned venture capital arm of Investor AB, the holding firm for Sweden's Wallenberg family. Amongst its investments, the company holds nearly 20% of the voting rights in Ericsson.

For IGC, the investment in ReCellular is part of the investment firm's "clean-tech" investing practice. The clean-tech sector is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the market; according to the National Venture Capital Association, investment in clean-tech operations has increased ten-fold over the past 5 years, from $235 million in 2003 to $2.6 billion in 2008.

"We see tremendous growth potential in ReCellular," says Albert Kim, Vice President of IGC. "They have revolutionized the electronics-sustainability industry by providing a convenient solution for consumers to recycle their used handsets, while at the same time extracting enough value from these phones to build a successful business. We have investigated many clean-tech companies, including many in the cell phone recycling arena, and we felt that ReCellular was clearly the world's most promising cell phone reuse and recycling firm."

Posted to the site on 13th August 2008