MIAMI, FLORIDA / ACCESS Newswire / May 8, 2025 / The circular economy isn't a talking point anymore-it's a battleground. As 2025 progresses, pressure is mounting on brands to deliver on sustainability targets, but economic headwinds and widening cost gaps between recycled and virgin plastic are forcing a reckoning. And in the eye of this storm stands SMX PLC (Security Matters) (NASDAQ: SMX), wielding technology and capital to transform the global plastics economy-starting with ASEAN.
Let's be clear: the €600/tonne price spread between recycled PET (R-PET) and virgin PET is not just a number-it's a signal flare. Brands across Europe, particularly small and mid-sized ones, are retreating from sustainability pledges to cut costs, rolling back recycled content goals, and reverting to cheaper virgin materials. Even best-intentioned giants like Coca-Cola have quietly revised their sustainability targets, creating a ripple effect that could compromise years of progress toward post-consumer plastic accountability.
But this industry regression opens the door for innovators who can bridge the gap between sustainability and profitability. SMX is that bridge.
New Capital, New Momentum
On May 8, SMX secured a $5.5 million injection through a private placement with institutional investors. While that headline may sound routine in capital markets, the implications are anything but. This funding comes at a pivotal moment-SMX is already mid-leap into one of the most important industrial corridors on Earth: the ASEAN region. The financing isn't just about balance sheet breathing room; it's an accelerant designed to turn SMX's recent ASEAN deals into dominant market positions.
This is about speeding up deployments, scaling integrations, and hardwiring traceability into supply chains while other companies hesitate.
Strategic Moves in the ASEAN Corridor
In April, SMX inked two transformative partnerships-with Aegis Packaging and Skypac Packaging-establishing its molecular traceability and blockchain-backed platform in the ASEAN packaging ecosystem. These aren't minor agreements. These are on-the-ground integrations with packaging leaders that service major sectors from food to pharma. And with SMX's system embedded, every wrapper, pouch, and container becomes a digital asset-fully traceable, verifiable, and compliant.
This is crucial because ASEAN isn't just a manufacturing base. It's a proving ground for the global circular economy. Countries like Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia are tightening ESG regulations and experimenting with advanced waste infrastructure. This makes the region a pressure cooker for real-world, tech-backed sustainability-and a place where SMX's platform becomes indispensable.
That $5.5 million? It will help transform these partnerships from promising pilots into full-scale rollouts, at a time when demand for transparent, intelligent materials is exploding.
Turning Packaging into Infrastructure
The collaboration with Aegis Packaging and its breakthrough O₂X™ coating marks a pivotal step in transforming mono-material plastics from disposable waste into trackable, accountable assets-enabled by SMX's invisible molecular markers and blockchain-based tracking platform. No longer reliant on manual audits or self-reported compliance, the packaging now proves its own sustainability credentials.
Skypac Packaging, a major ASEAN supplier of PP, OPP, HDPE, and LDPE products across food, pharma, and industrial sectors, embraces this same technological shift. Skypac's guiding principle-"Paper When Possible, Plastic When Useful"-reflects growing consumer and regulatory calls for smarter, more responsible material use. With SMX technology embedded, every unit of plastic Skypac produced carries a digital passport, turning each wrapper, container, or film into a verifiable, monetizable node in a circular economy-measured, traced, and accountable from origin to post-use recovery.
These deals, and others, shift the sustainability equation. Recycled content is no longer just a checkbox-it's a financial instrument. The SMX Plastic Cycle Token (PCT) system converts verified reuse into tradable value. This gives brands real incentive to maintain, even increase, recycled content levels-even as virgin plastic remains cheaper. Suddenly, using R-PET isn't a cost burden. It's a source of competitive and financial advantage.
ASEAN Digital Backbone Is A Global Model
Contrast this with Europe, where the recycled plastics market is wobbling under economic strain. As virgin PET undercuts R-PET by hundreds of euros per tonne, brands are reverting to 100% virgin content unless legally compelled otherwise. Enforcement of the EU's Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) remains toothless, and with no meaningful financial penalties for non-compliance, many PET users are doing the bare minimum.
But in ASEAN, where regulatory enforcement is evolving and environmental scrutiny is climbing, the incentive structures are flipping. SMX's embedded tech doesn't just meet compliance standards-it elevates them. And with $5.5 million in fresh capital, SMX is poised to scale its presence before competitors even find footing.
This isn't just about packaging. It's about SMX becoming the digital backbone of tomorrow's sustainable manufacturing infrastructure-starting in the ASEAN region and extending globally. The company's "physical to digital" solutions go beyond traceability; they unlock entirely new economic models for resource reuse. And as global pressure builds-politically, economically, and environmentally-that infrastructure will become as essential as the products it supports.
In a market defined by cost-cutting, SMX offers a different formula: prove it, price it, profit from it. And with a strategic capital infusion now in hand, its pace of progress just shifted into overdrive.
About SMX
As global businesses face new and complex challenges relating to carbon neutrality and meeting new governmental and regional regulations and standards, SMX is able to offer players along the value chain access to its marking, tracking, measuring and digital platform technology to transition more successfully to a low-carbon economy.
Forward-Looking Statements
The information in this press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intends," "may," "will," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "would" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Forward-looking statements in this press release may include, for example: successful launch and implementation of SMX's joint projects with manufacturers and other supply chain participants of steel, rubber and other materials; changes in SMX's strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects and plans; SMX's ability to develop and launch new products and services, including its planned Plastic Cycle Token; SMX's ability to successfully and efficiently integrate future expansion plans and opportunities; SMX's ability to grow its business in a cost-effective manner; SMX's product development timeline and estimated research and development costs; the implementation, market acceptance and success of SMX's business model; developments and projections relating to SMX's competitors and industry; and SMX's approach and goals with respect to technology. These forward-looking statements are based on information available as of the date of this press release, and current expectations, forecasts and assumptions, and involve a number of judgments, risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing views as of any subsequent date, and no obligation is undertaken to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. As a result of a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, actual results or performance may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause actual results to differ include: the ability to maintain the listing of the Company's shares on Nasdaq; changes in applicable laws or regulations; any lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMX's business; the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations, and identify and realize additional opportunities; the risk of downturns and the possibility of rapid change in the highly competitive industry in which SMX operates; the risk that SMX and its current and future collaborators are unable to successfully develop and commercialize SMX's products or services, or experience significant delays in doing so; the risk that the Company may never achieve or sustain profitability; the risk that the Company will need to raise additional capital to execute its business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; the risk that the Company experiences difficulties in managing its growth and expanding operations; the risk that third-party suppliers and manufacturers are not able to fully and timely meet their obligations; the risk that SMX is unable to secure or protect its intellectual property; the possibility that SMX may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors; and other risks and uncertainties described in SMX's filings from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Media contact for this release:
info@hawkpointmedia.com
SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited
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