Internationally acclaimed Cambridge GreenTech company, Enval, has joined a high-class entry for the inaugural Business Weekly-CfEL Cambridge Graduate Business of the Year Award.

Enval’s technology closes the recycling loop for laminated packaging waste. The company is commercialising waste recycling and environmental technologies that can recover clean aluminium from packaging waste such as toothpaste tubes.

The recovered aluminium can, in turn, be resmelted. Twenty customers worldwide are testing Enval’s technology, which provides the first alternative to dumping such waste in landfill.

In Europe alone, Enval could treat an estimated two million tonnes of waste per annum which would otherwise be sent to landfill.

The technology has already earned co-founders Carlos Ludlow and Howard Chase the Materials/Chemistry category award in the pan-European ACES competition designed to recognise the best academic entrepreneurs from all technology disciplines.  

A spin-out of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge, Enval recently completed an environmental research study for Unilever to provide a cradle to grave life cycle analysis of Unilever’s global supply chain in toothpaste production. The results are helping to inform Unilever’s global strategic packaging design decisions.

Now Enval tilts at the highly prized Cambridge Graduate Business of the Year Award, launched by Business Weekly and sponsored by the University’s Centre for Entrepreneurial learning at Judge Business School.

The inaugural winner will be announced at Business Weekly’s 21st Anniversary East of England Business Awards at Queens’ College, Cambridge, on Thursday March 24.

Entries are still being taken and contenders so far include: Arcus Global; Breathing Buildings; CAMBfix; Cambridge Temperature Concepts; Enecsys; Enval; Lumora and Owlstone Nanotech.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Carlos Ludlow