Israel Cleantech Ventures and Capricorn Invest in Green Flame Retardants

Israel Cleantech Ventures and Capricorn Venture Partners announced today that they have invested $6 million in FRX Polymers, the manufacturer of a new, environmentally friendly family of inherently flame retardant plastics.

FRX’s products are finding markets as polymeric flame retardant additives and as “stand-alone” inherently flame retardant engineering plastics.

FRX Polymers is currently in the commercialization stage for its unique family of polyphosphonate homopolymers and copolymers. These plastics are tough, transparent, possess high melt flow, and are inherently flame retardant, according to a press release announcing the investment.

Due to FRX Polymer’s high molecular weight, they do not migrate out of the host plastic when used as flame retardant additives. They also typically improve melt flow and/or mechanical properties – as well as deliver excellent flame retardant properties. FRX polymers are environmentally friendly since they do not contain halogens, whereas many other flame retardant additives do contain halogen.

FRX’s portfolio is covered by an extensive and growing patent estate. FRX was the 2008 recipient of Frost and Sullivan’s “Innovation of the Year” award for flame retardant materials and received the first-place award in the Clean Technology Business Forum, a competition sponsored by Battelle at the recent Global Plastics Environmental Conference in Orlando.

FRX is also featured in The Economic Report airing on CNN and Fox Business News this year. It has over 20 partnership agreements in place with some of the largest plastics manufacturers in the world.

“FRX represents an extremely compelling investment opportunity for us,” stated Jack Levy, Partner at ICV. “There is a clear global market demand for the company’s green flame retardant plastics and we believe that FRX’s products will play an important role in redefining a significant part of the $15B Flame Retardant Plastics industry.”

Claude Stoufs, Senior Investment Manager for Capricorn Venture Partners said, “FRX Polymers has developed a novel and very exciting product line to address the global need for non-halogen containing flame retardant plastics. As a consequence of the many excellent partnerships that FRX has established, we believe that the company is poised for accelerated growth.”