Rubber recovery,
upgraded
Our Kinfinity™ platform is designed to recover natural rubber, synthetic rubber, recovered carbon black and isoprenoids from end-of-life tyres, using engineered enzymes, molecular analytics and separation.
The platform is being developed to be feedstock-agnostic. Devulcanised rubber is the first application, where we have shown the process working on reference material.
The opportunity
Beyond recycling, rubber needs refining
Steel comes back as steel. Glass comes back as glass. A tyre comes back as a mix, and a mix is worth less than the individual materials inside.
Europe collects and treats 95% of its end-of-life tyres. These are burned for energy or repurposed without reaching the quality and purpose of virgin material. AKIN is building the step that is missing.
Collection and treatment: Tyres Europe, Circularity and End-of-life. Energy recovery: Recycling Europe, Tyres, as a share of Europe’s end-of-life tyres. Quality and purpose: Recycling Europe, Unlocking circularity through tyre ecodesign, position paper, 09 March 2026.
The platform
Understand the material, then recover it
- Natural rubber
- Carbon black
- Isoprenoids
- Synthetic rubber
A rubber biorefinery that recovers individual materials from rubber product mixes: an enzymatic process with selective polymer cleaving that fits at the end of an existing devulcanisation plant.
A molecular map of what is in a product and where it sits: a precision MALDI-MSI service, commercially proven on recovered carbon black, 6PPD and polymers.
Technology
The platform underneath both.
The company
Our main milestones
2026
June
Lab and office moved to Biotech Campus Delft, hosted by Planet B.io, to scale Kinfinity Recovery.
April
Patent filed for our novel enzyme enabling Kinfinity Recovery.
2025
October
€450,000 NWO Take-Off 2 awarded, to begin development of Kinfinity Recovery. With it, AKIN pivoted from services to a product-focused company.
April
Kinfinity Imaging broadened, with grant funding to develop an analysis method for more of the ingredients inside a tyre, starting with 6PPD.
2024
January
Kinfinity Imaging commercialised. First paid pilot project closed with a tyre developer.
2023
January
AKIN founded at PLNT Leiden, as a service company bringing insights from biotechnology and analytics. Kinfinity Imaging developed with business support from Venture Academy and Unlock, and financial backing from the Enterprise Leiden Fund.
