Meet the CCRI stakeholders: CircularInvest (CCRI Project)
Published on 30.10.2023
In this month’s CCRI stakeholder interview, we speak to Dora Fazekas of CircularInvest.
Funded by the EU under the Horizon Europe programme, CircularInvest is a CCRI Project supporting circular economy projects with a range of free project development assistance services.
Dora explains how CircularInvest offers tailored, comprehensive support to circular economy projects across Europe to increase their chances of securing financial resources. Dora also tells us more about the Circular Investment Readiness Network and CircularInvest’s new call for expressions of interest in project development assistance.
What potential do you see in the CCRI and what do you hope to achieve by participating?
In recent years, we've seen the rise of many initiatives aiming at making European cities and regions more circular and sustainable. Unfortunately, this has led to fragmentation and duplication of efforts. The CCRI can play a big role in harmonising European strategies and projects to make them more effective.
CircularInvest aims to become an important technical partner for the CCRI community, providing support in the development and execution of circular economy projects and helping them attract investments.
We have just launched our call for applications, which will close on 15 December 2023. The selected projects will receive free mentoring services to prepare them for investment and will gain access to networking opportunities with potential partners and investors. Interested candidates can apply through our portal at circularinvest.eu
In our efforts to bridge the gap between projects and investors and promote the adoption of circular practices, we've established the Circular Investment Readiness Network (CIRN) in partnership with the DEFINITE-CCRI project. The network will kick off its activities with an online meeting scheduled for 21 November 2023, and we extend a warm welcome to all CCRI members to join us.
What circular economy experience – including technical, economic and legal expertise – can you bring to the CCRI community?
CircularInvest offers tailored support to circular economy projects across Europe to increase their chances of securing financial resources. We offer comprehensive assistance in various areas, including the formulation of business plans, the evaluation of circularity, and fundraising.
Our partners and experts have developed tools and methodologies to assess and quantify the circularity of cities and regions and help them make informed, data-driven choices. In addition, our services encompass stakeholder mapping, intellectual property rights management, governance support, financial forecasts to assess the need for investments, guidance on local regulations and pitching to potential investors.
In what ways can you support investments at local and regional scale across Europe in the circular economy?
We work to bridge the funding gap within the circular economy ecosystem by providing circular economy projects with mentoring services. Once these projects are investment-ready, we facilitate their connection with investors, significantly improving their chances of securing financial resources.
In addition, through the Circular Investment Readiness Network, we offer support to circular economy stakeholders in tackling development and financing challenges. The network serves as a platform for sharing knowledge on how to develop circular projects that attract investors, fostering the development of expertise and encouraging collaboration among stakeholders.
e.g. chemicals, textile, ceramics, glass, cement, steel, bio-based industries
e.g. B2B services
e.g. NGOs, citizens associations
<5 000
large 500 000-200 000, medium 200 000-50 000, and small cities 50 000-5 000
large metropolitan area >1.5 million, metropolitan area 1.5 million-500 000
predominantly urban regions, intermediate and predominantly rural regions, refer to TERCET typology NUTS 3 region
