Overview

Scaling Materials Innovation for Decarbonisation and a Circular Economy

Rethinking Materials is an international innovation and investment summit that showcases and connects pioneering companies reimagining how materials in consumer products and packaging are produced, consumed, repurposed, and financed.

With a focus on materials innovation mitigating carbon emissions from textiles, packaging or durable goods industries, the summit explored technologies and material alternatives reducing our reliance on ‘incumbents’ such as petrochemical, virgin forest, and animal-based materials. The summit examined barriers to the adoption and scale up of new materials, highlighting opportunities for greater collaboration and advancement across value chains.

In its third year, the summit presented perspectives from brands and corporate leaders facing big questions on sustainability, business continuity, and regulatory requirements; converters and manufacturers sourcing viable, scalable, and sustainable new solutions; start-ups and producers developing innovative technologies and exploring new markets; and investors scouting the next ground-breaking innovations.

The summit brought together an audience of C-Suite and Director-level decision makers including CEOs/CTOs/CSOs and VPs of Innovation/R&D/Investment, with an emphasis on thought leadership, targeted 1-1 networking and start-up pitching, presenting a rare opportunity to dig deeper into debates surrounding:

2023 Key Themes

  • Net Zero Strategies: How can materials innovation aid the race to decarbonisation?
  • Supply Chain Transformation: Rethinking the building blocks for sustainable materials
  • Regulation & Legislation: How to comply with fast-changing legislation
  • Achieving Circularity: Recycling, reuse, replacement – what will make the greatest impact?
  • Enhanced Performance: Developments in barrier properties, durability, and functionality
  • Industry Symbiosis: Capitalising on cross sector collaboration and waste stream valorisation
  • Accelerated R&D: Leveraging big-data and AI for new materials discovery
  • Designing for Sustainability: End-to-end product innovation to achieve ESG objectives
  • Feedstock Sustainability & Security: The impact of global events on material innovation
  • Financing Growth: Investment and partnership strategies to accelerate scale-up
  • Routes to Faster Commercialisation: Bridging the gap from lab to market
  • Agile Innovation: Discovering new applications and markets for today’s solutions

Who Should Attend

Who attends?

We invite C-Suite and Director-level decision makers and experts, including CEOs/CTOs/CSOs and VPs of Innovation, Research & Development and Investment to join our prestigious community of companies from across consumer goods, packaging and textile value-chains:

  • Brands
  • Converters
  • Innovators
  • Investors
  • Producers
  • Regulators
  • Retailers

Keep scrolling to view our expansive ecosystem of past attendees, which include IKEA, Carrefour, AB InBev, KraftHeinz, ECBF, Dow and LanzaTech.

Why join our network?

Join a community of pioneering companies across consumer goods, packaging and textile value-chains.

Looking at the role of materials in mitigating carbon emissions, it has become clear that there is no silver bullet solution. Rather, industry collaboration and a multi-faceted strategy is likely to have greater impact.

For this reason, there has never been a more important time for leaders from across value chains to join the summit: to explore shared challenges, discover innovative, scalable solutions, form partnerships, and source investment that will shape the future of sustainable materials.

Who Joined Us in 2023?

2023 Advisory Board

About Rethink Events

Rethink Events has been producing thought leadership summits around the world for over a decade. These include the Future Food-Tech Series in London, New York, San Francisco and Singapore; the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit Series in London, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Singapore.