Shenzhen-based recycling company Carbon Zero Technologies International, which is eyeing a U.S. stock market listing, is aiming to replicate its success in mainland China globally despite geopolitical uncertainties, its founder said.
Founded in 2016, Carbon Zero operates an online platform that sends recycling orders from individuals, stores and consumer brands to its recycling staff. With thousands of physical sorting centers across China, the company then sells recycled items to dismantling and disposal companies.
“China’s recycling industry is relatively fragmented… with a large number of individual practitioners,” founder and CEO Baitong Tang said in an interview last week. “There is a need for a platform-based business or formal recycling system to effectively integrate these dispersed and disorderly activities. Our model happens to address this problem.”
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyzes and infographics, brought to you by our award-winning team.
Last year, Carbon Zero generated sales of nearly 4 billion yuan ($564.6 million), up 35 percent from a year earlier, the IPO prospectus said.
Baitong Tang, founder and CEO of Shenzhen-based recycling company Carbon Zero Technologies. Photo: Xinmei Shen alt=Baitong Tang, founder and CEO of Shenzhen-based recycling company Carbon Zero Technologies. Photo: Xinmei Shen>
In May, the China Securities Regulatory Commission approved the company to go abroad. The following month, it filed for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange, with the timing of the IPO still to be determined.
Although the net profit margin remains low at 0.4 percent in 2022 and 0.1 percent in 2023, Carbon Zero is already gearing up to launch its services in Singapore in February 2025, followed by Hong Kong, Europe or the US, Tang said.
“From a long-term strategy perspective, we need more markets,” Tang said.
While many Chinese companies going abroad in recent years have faced mounting geopolitical headwinds amid escalating trade tensions between the US and China, Carbon Zero is optimistic about making it to Western markets, according to Tang.
“It would be incorrect to say that we have absolutely no concerns, but I think these concerns are minor due to the nature of our industry,” Tang said, adding that the company does not fall under high-end technology categories such as semiconductors or biotechnology.
