Young rich lister's Sustainable Concrete Group snaps up majority stake in plastics venture RESIN8

Sustainable Concrete Group (SCG), the construction materials platform co-founded by Young Rich Lister Oscar Ledlin, has acquired a majority stake in RESIN8, a company that converts mixed plastic waste into a mineral-polymer aggregate used in concrete and asphalt.

Financial details of the acquisition, which has been undertaken in joint venture with South Australian circular economy manufacturing company Transmutation Pty Ltd, have not been disclosed.

However, the deal comes as Australia's soft plastics recycling infrastructure prepares for a restart, with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last year granting Soft Plastic Stewardship Australia an eight-year authorisation to operate a new national collection and recycling scheme.

Melbourne-based RESIN8 can currently process 10,000 tonnes of plastic waste per year, with capacity to scale to 50,000 tonnes.

The technology accepts mixed and contaminated plastics that cannot be mechanically recycled through conventional streams, converting them into an aggregate that replaces virgin sand and gravel in construction materials.

Ledlin, the Sustainable Concrete Group co-founder, says the RESIN8 acquisition represents a significant milestone for the group as it focuses on creating a closed-loop recycling ecosystem for construction materials in Australia.

“Currently less than 20 per cent of Australia’s plastic waste is recycled," says Ledlin.

"This figure is simply unsustainable. The construction industry is one of the largest industries driving the GDP and we have the means and the capacity to meaningfully move the dial to ensure more of our waste is recycled appropriately.

"Transmutation and Sustainable Concrete Group are two companies that are at the forefront of this movement and the RESIN8 product exemplifies this."

Ledlin says businesses are currently paying to send their hard-to-recycle plastics and glass to landfill.

"Sustainable Concrete Group and now RESIN8 offer a more sustainable alternative that can recycle and re-use these products in large volumes," he says.

“RESIN8 is used in concrete and asphalt projects as a direct replacement for extracted quarry materials, closing the loop on hard-to-recycle plastics by turning them into essential construction inputs.

"No one before RESIN8 has successfully engineered a solution to transmute hard-to-recycle plastics into a form that can then be infinitely recycled as an aggregate."

RESIN8's solution also prevents pathways to microplastic and leachate production, preventing contamination, he says.

“This acquisition forms a critical pillar in SCG’s strategy to build a fully circular construction materials platform, combining recycled sand, low-carbon additives and now plastic-derived aggregates to accelerate the transition to greener infrastructure.”

Federal government data paints a stark picture of the scale of the problem with Australia consuming four million tonnes of plastic in 2023-24, but a national recovery rate of just 14 per cent and 87 per cent of end-of-life plastics going directly to landfill.

The country's current plastics reprocessing capacity sits at 600,000 tonnes, with a planned additional 624,000 tonnes earmarked over the next five years.

RESIN8 was established in 2023 by the Australian and New Zealand Recycling Platform (ANZRP) in partnership with CRDC Circular Solutions.

The technology originated with CRDC Global, founded by Donald Thomson in Costa Rica, where operations have run for several years before expanding to Australia with the opening of a Melbourne processing plant in 2024.

The acquisition deepens SCG's push into sustainable construction materials and adds a waste-processing vertical to a platform that has been on an aggressive growth trajectory.

SCG's Series A late last year was heavily backed by investors, valuing the group about $100 million.

During FY25 the group acquired six civil construction businesses with a combined EBITDA of $26 million, along with its acquisition of mineral admixture company Maxsil, which was valued at $5 million.

Ledlin has positioned SCG as a consolidator across the construction materials supply chain, with the RESIN8 stake giving the group a direct feedstock solution at a time when regulatory pressure on plastic waste diversion is intensifying.

Australia's new soft plastics recycling scheme, backed by the ACCC authorisation, is expected to channel significant volumes of previously landfilled material into reprocessing pathways.

For RESIN8, which accepts the mixed and contaminated plastics that traditional recyclers reject, the scheme could substantially increase available feedstock as collection infrastructure scales back up following the collapse of the REDcycle program in 2022.

SCG's joint venture with Transmutation to hold the RESIN8 stake signals the group's intent to control both the input materials and the end-use applications across its concrete and civil construction portfolio, bridging waste recovery with commercial construction output.